The role of climate: implications for service employee engagement and customer service performance

This research attempts to challenge the resource–engagement and engagement–performance linkage of the job demands–resources model by testing these links under the moderating role of two climates: performance-focused and service failure recovery. Two studies test a model on the boundary conditions of the linkages across four service industries. The results suggest that whether a resource (i.e., self-efficacy and job autonomy) positively or negatively affects engagement depends on whether (1) a climate is appraised as a challenge or hindrance demand and (2) a climate is deemed a complementary or compensatory resource. Using multi-respondent data from customer service employees and their supervisors in the health care industry, Study 1 conceptualizes climate as organizational climate and finds that performance-focused climate strengthens (weakens) the positive effect of self-efficacy (job autonomy) on engagement while service failure recovery climate weakens the positive impact of self-efficacy on engagement. Study 2 generalizes the findings from Study 1 and provides broad support by testing the model using psychological climate in the financial services, tourism and hospitality, and retailing industries. This study closes with a configuration approach to climate research by discussing when multiple climates can co-exist under different types of resources

The effects of social ties on innovation behavior and new product performance in emerging economies: evidence from Turkey

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical and empirical understanding of how social ties affect innovation behavior and new product performance in Turkey, which is an emerging economy where high levels of economic and political uncertainties exist.The authors examine whether innovation behavior binds the political and business ties of the firm to new product performance. They also examine if these effects are contingent on variations in the institutional environment and market environment. Design/methodology/approach: Structural equation modeling and mediation analyses were used on a sample of 344 small- and medium-sized enterprises in Istanbul. Findings: Business ties are positively related to exploratory innovation behavior and political ties hamper such behavior. The authors also show that government support hinders firms’ disruptive innovation while encouraging incremental innovation behavior. The authors further demonstrate that the positive and indirect relation of business ties to new product performance through exploratory and exploitative innovation is largely insensitive to changes in market and institutional environments. Political ties are negatively (positively) and indirectly related to new product performance through exploratory (exploitative) innovation. Practical implications: Managers should choose the form of their personal interactions (political and/or business) based on the type of innovation that is being pursued. Additionally, managers should consider both the institutional environment and the market environment as important contingencies in their decision of whether to invest resources in developing social ties to build innovation behavior. Originality/value: The authors offer a deeper perspective of how social ties in emerging economies affect new product performance by considering exploratory and exploitative innovation behavior as mediating mechanisms. These mediating effects are conditional on institutional and market environments

Magnetic resonance based control of a robotic manipulator for interventions in the beating heart

Abstract Though many women in need of access to HIV preventive regimes are pregnant, there is a dearth of data to guide these care decisions. While oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) has been shown to prevent HIV infection in numerous high-risk populations, pregnant women have been excluded from all major prospective trials. We propose for ethical examination a theoretical trial—a prospective, observational study of PrEP for pregnant women at risk for HIV in sub-Saharan Africa—highlighting an ethical tradeoff that characterizes issues faced for advancing research in pregnancy. On the one hand, an “opportunistic” study design has certain ethical advantages: as formally construed, the research activity usually begins after decisions to use PrEP during pregnancy are made in the clinical setting. This minimizes research risks and avoids ethical problems that a randomized controlled trial (RCT) comparing PrEP to placebo would entail, particularly withholding care proven beneficial in other populations. On the other hand, observational studies yield less precise information than RCTs. This raises a broader question about the pace of research with pregnant women, as it typically takes many years after a drug’s approval for use in the general population to determine safety of the medication in pregnancy. Such delays can have the effect of making it impossible to ethically conduct an RCT with pregnant women, reducing the likelihood that the research community is able to obtain robust, pregnancy-specific evidence. While an observational cohort is potentially the most ethically and scientifically justified research design to study PrEP in pregnancy, earlier involvement of pregnant women in studies of newer preventives may lead to evidence that is more timely and robust