Felicitas Morhart

Brand-Specific Leadership: Turning Employees into Brand Champions

This article reports two studies on how managers can elicit brand-building behavior from frontline employees. Study 1 examines the mechanisms by which brand-specific transactional and transformational leadership influence employees’ brand-building behavior. The results from a survey of 269 customer-contact employees show that brand-specific transactional leaders influence followers through a process of compliance, leading to an increase in turnover intentions and a decrease in in-role and extra-role brand-building behaviors. In contrast, brand-specific transformational leaders influence followers through a process of internalization, leading to a decrease in turnover intentions and an increase in in-role and extra-role brand-building behaviors. In turn, both processes are mediated by employees’ perceptions of autonomy, competence, and relatedness with regard to their work roles as brand representatives. Moreover, the results show that brand-specific transactional leadership moderates the influence of brand-specific transformational leadership in a nonlinear, inverse U-shaped way, so that a medium level of transactional leadership maximizes the positive effects of transformational leadership. Study 2 addresses whether managers can learn brand-specific transformational leadership. A field experiment shows that brand-specific transformational leadership can indeed be learned through management training.

Fair Is Good, but What Is Fair? Negotiations of Distributive Justice in an Emerging Nonmonetary Sharing Model

By means of an ethnographic approach, this research examines perceptions of fairness and consumer behavior in an emerging nonmonetary sharing system. In contrast to market exchanges, which are defined by clear rules and principles of reciprocity, the redistribution of goods in a “sharing” context is in many cases less institutionalized and thus open to contestation. We draw on concepts from institutional theory to map out the interplay of different and partly contradicting fairness perceptions in an emerging nonmonetary sharing system and explain how those are negotiated and synthesized. We explicitly highlight a nonrelational fairness principle, leading to the stabilization of the sharing system under study through processes of “goal sharing” and “hierarchical coupling.” We discuss our findings in terms of their implications on sharing theory and the role of fairness within this literature stream.

Mit transformationaler Führung das Brand Behavior stärken

Mitarbeiter spielen fur den Markenerfolg eines Unternehmens eine zentrale Rolle. Sie sind es, die die Marke nach ausen hin verkorpern und durch ihr Verhalten an den Kundenkontaktpunkten das Markenerlebnis der Kunden wesentlich pragen (Berry 2000; Hartline et al. 2000). Die Relevanz markenorientierten Mitarbeiterverhaltens – des so genannten Brand Behavior – belegt zudem eine neue empirische Studie (Henkel et al. 2007), die zeigt, dass der Markenerfolg eines Unternehmens wesentlich davon abhangt, inwieweit die Mitarbeiter das offiziell kommunizierte Markenversprechen in der Interaktion mit den Kunden leben. Mitarbeiter mussen deshalb zu Markenbotschaftern werden. Eine Herausforderung, der sich vor allem Fuhrungskrafte stellen mussen, denn ihr Verhalten hat innerhalb des Unternehmens eine ganz besondere Signalwirkung – im Positiven wie im Negativen. Man denke nur an den neuen Ford-Chef Alan Mulally, der bei seiner Antrittspressekonferenz erklarte, er selbst fahre privat keinen Ford, sondern einen Lexus, weil es das beste Auto auf der Welt sei. Abgesehen von dem PR-Debakel, das dieser Fauxpas nach ausen ausloste, gab Mulally der Belegschaft damit zu verstehen, dass das eigene Produkt keines ist, mit dem man sich wirklich identifizieren kann. Oder der ehemalige Bahn-Chef Hartmut Mehdorn: In einem Interview auserte er, dass Zugfahrten ab vier Stunden eine Tortur seien und man in diesem Fall lieber das Auto nehme solle. Fur diesen Fehltritt handelte er sich die zweifelhafte Auszeichnung des „Marketing Flop des Jahres“ sowie das Kopfschutteln seiner Mitarbeiter ein. Stolz auf die eigene Marke fordert hingegen ein Manager bei seiner Belegschaft, wenn er selbst zum „Reklamelaufer“ fur sein Unternehmen wird. Puma-Vorstandschef Joachim Zeitz z. B. ist dafur bekannt, dass er selbst bei hochoffiziellen Anlassen die hauseigenen Sneakers zum Anzug tragt, und Freenet-Chef Eckhard Spoerr ist selten ohne eine der grasgrunen Taschen anzutreffen, die sein Unternehmen als Werbegeschenk verteilt (Reppesgaard 2007).

Navigating toward team success

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to outline a set of principles which enable companies and managers to effectively handle people as a resource and allow them to turn teams into high performance teams.Design/methodology/approach – The Alinghi sailing teams approach to establishing and managing a high performance team was explored by means of an ethnographic case study. The development, organization and leadership principles of the team were subjected to intense scrutiny. This was done by interviewing the key players in the different areas (sailing crew, design team and management) at different stages, by observation of the group at work and video analyses. To substantiate the findings from interviews and observations, workshops with team members and experts were organized.Findings – The Swiss Alinghi sailing team was the undisputed winner of the famous Americas Cup in 2003 and managed to defend it successfully in July 2007 – against strong competition. The principles implemented by team founder Ern...

Heartwarming as the Other Side of Heartbreaking Experiences in Research

Research can provide heartwarming experiences which uplift researchers and participants, providing occasions for personal growth and change . Our article makes this case and illustrates heartwarming research experiences using examples from our own research.

Collecting Hidden Consumer Data Online: Research on Homosexuals

ABSTRACT Collecting highly private data from consumers with nonapparent or even hidden characteristics, such as homosexuals, is difficult for two reasons: First, the resulting data sets are rather small and nonrepresentative due to reachability and nonresponse problems. Second, data quality is often unsatisfying, for example, due to social desirability problems. To handle these problems, we recommend an online research strategy. We make our case by reporting on a Germany-wide online study on homosexuals where we applied a three-step procedure for recruiting participants. We were successful in generating a sample of considerable size (n = 6,274) and heterogeneity, and in obtaining high-quality responses. Implications for marketing researchers and advertising professionals are provided.

Turning Employees into Brand Champions : Leadership Style Makes a Difference

Abstract How can managers elicit brand-building behaviors on the part of frontline employees? When comparing brand-specific “transactional” and “transformational” leadership styles, the latter clearly outperforms the former. Transactional leaders influence followers through a process of compliance, leading to increased turnover intentions and a decrease in in-role and extra-role brand-building behaviors. In contrast, brand-specific transformational leaders influence followers through a process of internalization, leading to decreased turnover intentions and an increase in in-role and extra-role brand-building behaviors. When combined, however, a medium level of transactional leadership maximizes the positive effects of transformational leadership.

Inter-institutional collaboration for new integrative teaching programs

Purpose – This paper presents an inter‐institutional collaboration project. The projects goal was to develop a new teaching program that fosters pre‐university innovation and entrepreneurship education. The purpose of this paper is to derive implications for future inter‐institutional collaborations.Design/methodology/approach – The development and testing of the new teaching program corresponds to the design science paradigm.Findings – The findings illustrate that inter‐institutional collaboration can generate completely new approaches that are able to deal with new challenges in education.Research limitations/implications – This research focuses only on one specific inter‐institutional collaboration project. The findings are limited to this project.Practical implications – The paper discusses implications for future educational collaboration projects to develop new teaching programs.Originality/value – The paper presents a collaboration project between university, school and industry. It illustrates th...

Messung und Steuerung markenadäquaten Mitarbeiterverhaltens in Kundentelefonaten unter Berücksichtigung des Markengeschlechts

Markenadaquates Mitarbeiterverhalten ist im Rahmen der Forschung zur internen Markenfuhrung sowohl theoretisch als auch anhand zahlreicher Fallstudien eingehend untersucht worden. Dieser Artikel befasst sich mit dem verbalen Mitarbeiterverhalten in telefonischen Kundenkontakten. Im Rahmen einer experimentellen Untersuchung mit fiktiven Kundentelefonaten wird untersucht, inwiefern die kundenseitige Wahrnehmung eines Kundenkontaktmitarbeiters hinsichtlich seines On-brand Verhaltens von dessen verbalen Verhalten determiniert ist und gezielt gesteuert werden kann. Als zentrales Konstrukt zur Beurteilung der Passung zwischen Mitarbeiterverhalten und Marke dient hierbei die geschlechtliche Markenpersonlichkeit. Es zeigt sich, dass sich mit Hilfe eines semantisch-lexikalischen-prosodischen Steuerinstruments das verbale Verhalten von Kundenkontakt Mitarbeitern so manipulieren lasst, dass es vom Rezipienten als passend zur reprasentierten Marke wahrgenommen wird.