Mahesh Subramony

The Long-Term Influence of Service Employee Attrition on Customer Outcomes and Profits

The authors proposed and tested a model linking service-employee attrition, customer-perceived service outcomes, and financial performance utilizing time-lagged data obtained from 64 business units of a temporary help services (staffing) firm. Using the notion of relational assets, the authors predicted that employee attrition (both voluntary turnover and downsizing) would disrupt the existing stock of relationships between customer-facing employees and their customers, which would have negative effects on customer outcomes and future financial performance of business units. The authors found that (a) the relationship between voluntary turnover and customer-perceived service brand image (SBI) was fully mediated by customers’ evaluations of service delivery, (b) the relationship between downsizing and SBI was fully mediated by the customer orientation levels of the unit staff, and (c) SBI significantly predicted future unit profitability. These findings point to critical factors that leaders must address when experiencing elevated levels of turnover or considering downsizing. These include focusing on developing customer orientation levels among employees through the effective use of selection, training, performance management, and compensation, minimizing employee voluntary turnover by creating positive work environments, and factoring in the long-term costs of downsizing on the organization’s SBI and future profitability.

Services Management Research: Review, Integration, and Future Directions

Several streams of management research have focused on the relationship between organizations, employees, and customers within the context of services. However, this body of work lacks integration and requires an internally consistent framework encompassing critical constructs, causal mechanisms, and levels of analyses. To address these gaps, we reviewed empirical studies with service-related outcomes published in management and organizational behavior journals as well as critical summative and theoretical works within the fields of management and marketing, and constructed an integrative framework for services management theory and research. This framework incorporates constructs and relationships within (individual and unit levels) and across (multilevel and microfoundations) levels of analyses and highlights areas that are ripe for future theoretical development and empirical inquiry.

Accelerating employee-related scholarship in service management: Research streams, propositions, and commentaries

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to accelerate research related to the employee-facets of service management by summarizing current developments in multiple research streams, providing propositions, and articulating new directions for theory and empirical inquiry. Design/methodology/approach Seven scholars provide short reviews of the core topics and findings from four employee-related research streams – collective turnover, service climate, emotional labor, and occupational stress; and generate propositions to guide future theoretical and empirical work. Four distinguished service scholars – David Bowen, Ray Fisk, Christian Gronroos, and Jochen Wirtz comment upon these research streams and provide future directions for accelerating employee-related research in service management. Findings All four research-streams yield insights that have the potential to advance service management research. Commentaries from the distinguished scholars further integrate this work with key concerns within service management including technology-enablement, transformative services, and service strategy. Originality/value This paper is unique in its scope of coverage of management topics related to service and its aim to promote interdisciplinary dialog between service management scholars and researchers conducting employee-related research relevant to services.

Client supportiveness in contingent employment: The role of relationship quality

Extant literature dealing with nonstandard employment relationships reveals that contingent (“temporary”) workers are influenced by the supportiveness levels of their client organizations. However, the antecedents and consequences of client supportiveness remain underinvestigated. Specifically, the link between client supportiveness and relationship quality (i.e., the relationship between client organizations and temporary help services [THS] firm) has received minimal attention. I proposed that (1) the quality of the relationship between client organizations and the THS firm will influence client supportiveness, (2) client supportiveness will influence contingent workers’ job attitudes, (3) these job attitudes will influence future levels of relationship quality, and (4) relationship quality will predict unit-level profitability. A time-lagged, unit-level test of this model using large samples of worker and client data obtained from 89 business units of a THS firm provided complete support for the first three proposed relationships. Further, the association between relationship quality and profitability was found to be significant for medium-sized and large business units, but not for small business units.

Service work in 2050: toward a work ecosystems perspective

The purpose of this paper is to explore the changing nature of the relationship between service workers and their work arrangements. Building upon classical and contemporary management theories and examining current trends and disruptions in employment relationships, it proposes a dynamic and relational model applicable to the management of service work in future decades (notionally in the year 2050).,This paper introduces and develops the concept of worker–ecosystem relationship as a core construct to describe the participation and productivity of workers in the significantly transformed work environment of 2050.,This paper argues that in work ecosystems – defined as relatively self-contained and self-adjusting systems – work arrangements will evolve toward less-clearly defined employment relationships characterized by long-term social contracts, tightly defined work roles and physical proximity of workers and organizations.,A novel yet theoretically rooted construct of work ecosystems is introduced, using this new lens to predict changes in the nature of service work in 2050.

Customer Emotional Labor in Service Settings: A Mixed-Method Investigation of Display Rules

The current work adopts an interdisciplinary perspective, integrating the services management literature on co-creation of value with the psychological literature on emotional labor. Specifically, ...