Yuanqiong He

Service climate, employee commitment and customer satisfaction: Evidence from the hospitality industry in China

Purpose – This study attempts to contribute to the knowledge of how service climate improves customer satisfaction in the hospitality industry based on evidence from mainland China. It considers different dimensions of service climate separately, including customer orientation, managerial support and work facilitation, and introduces an important mediator – employee commitment – to examine the relationship between service climate and customer satisfaction.Design/methodology/approach – A theoretical framework is proposed to suggest links among the three dimensions of service climate, employee commitment and customer satisfaction. A structured questionnaire was developed to collect data from employees in the hospitality industry of China. The constructs were measured by using established scales. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the theoretical hypotheses.Findings – Empirical results indicate that different dimensions of service climate have different effects on customer satisfaction. For ins...

Linking organizational support to employee commitment: evidence from hotel industry of China

Employee commitment is an important issue for both practitioners and academicians. Although antecedents of employee commitment have been examined in previous literature, organizational support, which is an important organizational characteristic to be developed by managers, and its relationship with employee commitment have not attracted enough academic attention nowadays. Meanwhile, enough empirical evidence of relationship between various dimensions of employee commitment, such as affective and normative commitments is not there. This article focuses on exploring the relationships among organizational support, affective commitment, and normative commitment, based on the data from the hotel industry of China. The results indicate that affective commitment has significant positive effect on normative commitment. Among the three dimensions of organizational support, i.e. managerial support, coworker relationship, and role ambiguity, managerial support has the greatest influence on employee commitment. Theoretical discussions and practical implications have also been provided.

The effect of corporate social responsibility on brand loyalty: the mediating role of brand image

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is regarded as a good strategic marketing tool and it has significant influence on consumers’ behaviours. The purpose of this study is to explore the indirect effects of different dimensions of CSR on brand loyalty in a real business context. This study focuses on legal and ethical responsibilities as two dimensions of social responsibility. The empirical results indicate that consumers’ perceived legal and ethical responsibilities of brands may improve brand loyalty through enhancing positive functional and symbolic images. Moreover, corporate legally responsible behaviour helps to enhance a more functional image perceived by consumers than a symbolic image, while ethically responsible action impacts a symbolic image more than a functional image. These results suggest firms should focus on key dimensions of social responsibility based on the expectations of consumers in their marketing programmes.

How cross-functional management influences new product development: a socio-technical perspective

ABSTRACT This paper develops an integrated theoretical framework of cross-functional management from a socio-technical perspective, focusing on technical support, job rotation and process standardisation. It then explores the effects of these three practices on new product development (NPD) via a global survey of 725 manufacturing companies in 20 countries. The results show that technical support and job rotation are positively related to the speed of NPD, while process standardisation and job rotation are positively associated with the quality of new products. These results contribute to the field of NPD by integrating the technical and social aspects of cross-functional management.

Re-examining the effects of supplier integration on operations performance: a relational view

Purpose The importance of supplier integration (SI) in improving firms’ performance has been previously identified but the effects of SI are complicated, as the relationship between supplier and buyer is full of uncertainty. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the effects of SI on operations performance from a relational view. Design/methodology/approach Two strategies of integrating suppliers are theoretically presented: information sharing and joint decision making. Hypotheses are then developed on when SI influences operations performance, using product complexity and competitive intensity as moderating factors. The hypotheses are tested using a global survey data set, made up of 763 manufacturing firms from 22 countries. Findings The results indicate a positive relationship between SI and operations performance and that the moderating roles of product complexity and competition intensity are significant, but product complexity does not have significant moderation effects on the relationships between joint decision making and product quality/cost reduction. Research limitations/implications The moderators of product complexity and competitive intensity are not comprehensive. Future study into how and under what circumstances SI has the greatest effect will be of benefit. Originality/value This study makes theoretical contributions by exploring the strategies of SI through a relational view, and examining the effects of SI through the moderating roles of product complexity and competition intensity.