Patrice Rosenthal

Delivering Customer‐Oriented Behaviour through Empowerment: An Empirical Test of HRM Assumptions

Organizational initiatives to strengthen customer orientation among front‐line service workers abound, and have led many commentators to speak of the reconstitution of service work. These interventions rest on managers’ assumptions about what engenders the desired customer‐oriented behaviours among employees. We evaluate those assumptions in the context of a major change initiative in a supermarket firm. The logic of the programme mirrors key precepts in the contemporary management literature. These are that management behaviour, job design and values‐based training can produce a sense of empowerment among employees, and that empowerment will generate prosocial customer‐oriented behaviour. Using data from a large scale employee survey, we test the validity of those assumptions. Employees who perceived management behaviour in a positive light and who had participated in values‐based training were more likely to feel empowered (i.e. to have internalized prosocial service values and to feel a sense of competence and autonomy on the job). Psychological empowerment was, in turn, positively related to the customer‐oriented behaviour of workers. This study, therefore, provides support for key assumptions underlying HRM theory and practice in services.

Front-line responses to customer orientation programmes: a theoretical and empirical analysis

Programmes designed to strengthen customer orientation among front-line service workers represent one of the most common forms of culture change initiatives within service organizations. Despite their importance to contemporary management theory and practice, we know relatively little about how employees react to interventions of this kind, and why they react as they do. The paper aims to address this gap in the literature. It does this through an analysis of front line reactions to a major customer care initiative in one of the largest supermarket chains in the UK. Using data from a large-scale employee survey carried out in seven stores, we first propose a general typology of employee responses to customer care programmes. We then examine some typical employee profiles associated with the main types of response. The analysis is placed within a wider theoretical context consisting of a critical overview of the main theories which might help explain the nature of general and individual reactions to culture change programmes. To this end, we address and draw upon a variety of literatures and debates linked to various aspects of organization and management, industrial psychology, training and development and critical discourse analysis.

The social construction of clients by service agents in reformed welfare administration

This article explores categorization and labelling in organizations through a study of the social construction of clients by service agents in reformed British welfare administration. We analyse the content of client typologies and show how these are embedded in the nature of front-line service work and the organizational context as structured by social authorities. We find a pervasive categorization and valorization of clients according to their perceived attitudes to work, on the reported basis of their body language and demeanour in initial service interactions. This is embedded in a more complex system of social construction, encompassing diverse criteria such as capacity for aggression, gratitude and social status and age. We show how the criteria used by staff to make sense of overlapping groups of clients differs between the main sample in post-reform sites and those working in pre-reform benefit offices. We consider the research and practical implications of our study, the latter relating to the espoused strategy of personalized and flexible treatment of clients in an era of new public management reforms.

‘The Work You Want, The Help You Need’: Constructing the Customer in Jobcentre Plus

In this article we explore the concept of the customer and its application within the contemporary public sector. While the centrality of the customer ideal to ‘the new public management’ is clear, the nature, appropriateness and implications of its use are less so. Debates on these issues turn on meanings ascribed to the customer role. In the first part of the article we consider shifting conceptions of the customer appearing in literatures on consumption, organization and the new public management. The second part of the article explores the representation of the customer in an organization emblematic of the new public management in Britain. Jobcentre Plus is an emerging organization charged with delivery of the government’s work-focused welfare agenda. The agency is involved in constructing customers from what once were benefit claimants and/or the unemployed. Through analysis of internal and public documents and observation of six sites, we explore the explicit and implicit meanings of the customer as conveyed through language and labelling, operational practices and features of the physical environment. We find a complex interaction of narratives of customer sovereignty and control. In the final part of the article we consider how this case may be read according to the academic narratives previously outlined.

An overview of the UK Employment Appeal Tribunal decisions in sexual harassment cases 1995‐2005

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present research conducted with legal cases of sexual harassment (SH) in Great Britain over the past ten years. The paper contributes to the equal opportunities literature since it offers a rare interpretation of longitudinal case data with important implications for law, policy, social science and, indeed, for the management of equal opportunities within organizations. The paper approaches SH both as an evolving legal issue and as a type of organizational conflict, with particular power influences and effects.Design/methodology/approach – The population of individual case records with a SH component was accessed via the BALII database for the period 1995‐2005. These case records were content‐analyzed using a framework of variables developed for the study. Variables of interest initially were identified from a review of the social science, law and policy‐related literaturesFindings – The vast majority (96 per cent) of workers bringing appeals of SH were female. Th...

A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Sexual Harassment Claims 1995-2005

This article explores the organisational and legal context in which parties involved in claims relating to sexual harassment operate, and presents an analysis of the population of sexual harassment cases heard by Employment Tribunals between 1995 and 2005.

Sexual Harassment Judgments by British Employment Tribunals 1995–2005: Implications for Claimants and Their Advocates

This article reports on the first large-scale study of sexual harassment litigation in Britain based on analysis of official case records. Its aim is to identify key factors distinguishing successful and unsuccessful claims. Five themes drive the analysis: credibility and its construction, the various types of sexual harassment, power resources, the time period in which the case was heard, and the gender composition of the tribunal. Hypotheses are tested on a random sample of 183 cases heard between 1995 and 2005. Some important disconnections between workplace realities and the operation of the tribunal system were revealed. Credibility of claimants turns importantly on how they initially reacted to the harassment of which they later complained and on the number of complementary claims they bring. Workers in elementary occupations experience a lower success rate before tribunals. Power resources in the form of legal representation significantly affect case outcomes. Implications for claimants and their advocates are discussed.