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Responsible management has become a business imperative in an era of growing governmental and public scrutiny of managerial practices and accountability. Top-down attempts at developing transparent codes of practice or agenda statements have been ineffective, especially given the difficulties of aligning responsibility needs with traditional performance indicators. Thus, we argue, there is a pertinent need to foster a sustainable sense of moral responsibility at the organizational frontline. We posit that stewardship offers a foundation for developing sustainable solutions based on aligning the interests of stakeholders and balancing longer-term and shorter-term benefits. Three principal stakeholders are involved at the organisational frontline; frontline management (FLM), frontline employees (FLE) and customers. Accordingly, we identify three key areas requiring development: stewardship-based control systems, climate and customers on the organizational frontline. We illustrate these areas with pertinent research and, hence, collate a research agenda across these areas to facilitate the development and embedding of responsible management based on a stewardship foundation.

ABSTRACTIn this article, we develop a conceptual model of adaptive versus proactive recovery behavior by self‐managing teams (SMTs) in service recovery operations. To empirically test the conceptual model a combination of bank employee, customer, and archival data is collected. The results demonstrate support for independent group‐level effects of intrateam support on adaptive and proactive recovery behavior, indicating that perceptual consensus within service teams has incremental value in explaining service recovery performance. In addition, we provide evidence that adaptive and proactive recovery behavior have differential effects on external performance measures. More specifically, higher levels of adaptive performance positively influence customer‐based parameters (i.e., service recovery satisfaction and loyalty intentions), while employee proactive recovery behavior contributes to higher share of customer rates.

This research examines the regulatory fit effect on perceived value and buying intentions in the context of private health insurance decisions. The so-called value-from-fit effect is assessed in conjunction with the effect of risk perceptions. Value-from-fit results from the interaction effect between regulatory focus concerns (discount vs. cost-sharing policies) and message framing (gain vs. loss). The results show that the fit effect on buying intentions is fully mediated by the perceived value of a health insurance policy and that perceived value functions as partial mediator of the effect of risk perceptions. The relative strength of the regulatory fit effect in explaining customer perceived value is small compared with the impact of perceived risk. The findings suggest that if health insurance providers wish to offer a premium discount, communicating the policy by emphasizing the benefits consumers attain from purchasing a deductible policy (i.e., getting the discount) may enhance the value of the policy. On the other hand, positioning a premium copayment policy can be more effectively done by emphasizing the costs associated with not choosing this policy.

This article examines whether online and mail surveys produce convergent results, which would allow them to be used in mixed-mode service quality studies. In the context of a large business-to-business service quality assessment, an analysis of the accuracy and completeness of respondent answers to both open and closed questions suggests that online and mail surveys produce equivalent results. Composite reliability shows consistently high levels for both groups, and the means and variance-covariance matrices are equal across modes. However, minor differences occur between the two survey methods; online respondents provide more improvement suggestions, indicate more often to which competitor they want to switch, and provide lengthier answers in response to requests for examples of positive experiences with the company. This research provides important findings regarding the process for, and results of, comparing two survey modes.

Call centers have become an important customer access channel as well as an important source of customerrelated information. This boundary-spanning unit has finally enabled companies to take marketing's commonplace wisdom of listening to the customer literally. As a result, there has been an increase in voice-to-voice service encounters and in these encounters listening as an essential skill. In this article, three dimensions of listening behavior are discerned: attentiveness, perceptiveness, and responsiveness. Results of an empirical study reveal that attentiveness is a direct driver of encounter satisfaction, whereas perceptiveness is primarily related to trust. Furthermore, the responsiveness dimension is related positively to both satisfaction and trust. In addition, we find a significant association between satisfaction and trust, and, finally, both a satisfactory evaluation of the voice-tovoice encounter and the build up of trust have a significant impact on the customer's intention to contact the call center again in the future.

It has often been advocated that successful new service (product) development groups should bind into a cohesive unit, sharing a common direction and vision. This suggests close connections and communication between members of the department. The authors conducted two communication network studies to examine the impact of interpersonal communication (i.e., within team, cross team, and cross company) on market and technological learning during new financial service development within the marketing department of banks. They conclude that close cooperation, signified by a strong integration and a central position within the communication network, could be detrimental for learning activities. For service innovation management, the biggest challenge seems to be the preservation of heterogeneity and diversity among individuals and groups both within and across the marketing department to ensure learning. Both boundary-spanning communication and the presence of individuals within loosely coupled marketing networks seem effective communication conditions to obtain a rich learning environment.

The implementation of a superior service strategy strongly depends on the attitude and behavior of customer contact personnel in service organizations. However, conflicting demands of organizational constraints, service managers, service teams, and customers frequently lead to role stress of service employees. In this article, the authors investigate antecedents and consequences of role stress experienced in after-sales service management of an international office equipment manufacturer from a longitudinal perspective. Empowering service employees by giving them authority and responsibility decreases their sense of role stress and, at the same time, enhances job satisfaction. Moreover, the authors notice a negative short-term and a positive long-term effect of the presence of rules and regulations. In the short term, this leads to higher role conflict. Finally, on the basis of the positive lagged effect of perceived group cohesiveness on role ambiguity, the authors conclude that creating "tight-knit" workgroups can actually prove detrimental because the norms they develop might be hard to change.

Aligning the service-sales interface within and beyond organizational boundaries is worthwhile, yet many firms are not reaping the rewards of such practice. The managerial need for in-depth insights into the blending of selling and service delivery could be better informed through resolution of current open theoretical debates. This position article extends the current knowledge base on the service-sales interface in three ways. First, we offer a synopsis of current scholarly progress on blending service delivery with sales and identify contextual conditions that foster effective service-sales ambidexterity. Second, turning to current practice, we use an empirical case study to demonstrate how a multinational company strategically deploys online learning to bridge structural knowledge and skills gaps within its reseller network to build ambidextrous capacity in the channel and support solution selling. Complementing this human learning approach, we also explore recent advances in machine learning and their impact on the service-sales interface. Third, we blend these academic and practice perspectives to offer a service-sales interface agenda that identifies directions for future research in terms of both the theoretical development of ambidexterity and defining the effective blending of technologies at the service-sales interface that enables ambidexterity in practice.

Frontline employees in traditional customer service units are under increasing pressure to pursue the twin goals of providing quality service while achieving productivity gains by meeting increased sales targets—that is, being service-sales ambidextrous. Drawing from literature on organizational ambidexterity, this study explores forces that facilitate the conversion from a service-only environment to one that emphasizes both sales and service behavior. With a sample of more than 2,306 frontline employees in 267 bank branches, this study examines the impact of contextual variables on service-sales ambidexterity from a multilevel perspective. It then explores the consequences by analyzing objective financial data at the retail branch level, which reveal a significant relationship between ambidexterity and financial performance. Empowerment and transformational leadership are positively associated with service-sales ambidexterity at individual and branch levels; team support is associated with ambidexterity only at the individual employee level. Managers thus should let service workers exercise their own judgment when deciding when or what to up- or cross-sell. The delegation of authority works best for branch office veterans whose service excellence and selling both are recognized and rewarded.

The study focuses on a new service benefit derived from service usage, that is, self-efficacy increase, rather than self-efficacy evaluations as such. The authors propose that this benefit, which refers to feeling better about oneself while consuming a service, will reflect positively on service outcomes. The authors argue that self-efficacy can develop differently over time and this should be investigated to explain service evaluations more fully. Therefore, the authors separate effects related to self-efficacy level and change on value. Results show that the increase of customers' self-beliefs in their capabilities during information search positively affects perceived value irrespective of self-efficacy levels or other costs and benefits. Self-efficacy increase is predicted by a firm's strategic choice to help customers learn, the firm's tactic to provide high-quality information, and the customers' level of cognitive effort. In sum, the authors show that by fostering customers' self-efficacy build up, firms can provide a more valuable and satisfying service experience.

In this article, the authors investigate whether the fit between consumers' image and the image of an innovation, commonly referred to as image congruence, has an impact on customers' attitudes toward innovative services as well as the intention to use these new services. Moreover, situational influences (i.e., private vs. public, and friends vs. colleagues) are examined. The results of the two experiments show that not only does image congruence have a significant impact on consumer attitudes and the adoption decision, but there is also an interaction between image congruence and the consumption situation. Contrary to the authors' expectations, consumers with low image congruence are influenced more by their surroundings than consumers with high image congruence. It seems that as long as the fit between the consumer's self-image and the service image is high, signals from the consumer's environment are overruled.

This article examines antecedents and consequences of the adoption level of standardized information technology (IT) versus customized IT in self-managing teams (SMTs) in a financial services institution. Linkages between specified antecedents and the adoption levels of standardized and customized IT were investigated using data collected from bank employees and in-company databases. The authors find positive individual-level effects of tolerance of self-management, ease of use, and innovativeness on the adoption level of standardized IT and positive individual-level effects of tolerance of self-management and perceived usefulness on the adoption level of customized IT. These findings suggest that discriminating between different types of IT creates a better understanding of IT adoption in SMTs. A similar investigation of the IT adoption-service performance relationships shows that the adoption level of customized IT rather than of standardized IT has a crucial impact on service performance both in terms of customer satisfaction and productivity.

Academic service research centers have been positioned as a research partner for service companies. In this article, the authors present a framework for assessing their effectiveness. The results of an empirical study conducted during 2 years suggest that user satisfaction is central to establishing decision maker trust, as well as promoting the use of the information. In both years, quality of content and researcher characteristics were identified as key drivers of satisfaction. In the initial stage of the relationship between the service research center and the client firm, information use is also driven by the political acceptability of the information. It was found that trust had no effect on information use. However, the results of the second year suggest that particularly trust in the researcher becomes a crucial factor as the relationship develops, because it directly affects the use of information by academic service research centers.

Unfamiliarity with foreign business environments and cultures will result in higher levels of uncertainty, especially for international service organizations. To effectively deal with international uncertainty, it seems crucial to have access to information that is as complete as possible. In practice, however, information is hardly ever complete. To date, little is known about the impact of incomplete information on the decision-making processes in international service firms. This article examines the effects of incomplete information on the evaluation and use of marketing research intelligence. The results of an experimental study suggest that decision makers in international service firms are unlikely to ignore missing information. Instead, they tend to adopt a strategy of inferential, assumption-based reasoning. Furthermore, the absence of information relevant to decision making in international services marketing has distinct evaluative consequences in terms of satisfaction, trust, and intention to use information.