This longitudinal study among Registered Nurses has four purposes: (1) to investigate whether emotional, quantitative and physical demands, and family-work conflict have a negative impact on nurses’ perceived effort; (2) to investigate whether quality of leadership, developmental opportunities, and social support from supervisors and colleagues have a positive impact on meaning of work; (3) to investigate whether burnout from the combined impact of perceived effort and meaning of work mediates the relationship with occupational turnover intention; and (4) whether the relationships in our overall hypothesized framework are moderated by age (nurses categorized under 40 years versus ≥ 40 years old). In line with our expectations, emotional, quantitative, and physical demands, plus family-work conflict appeared to increase levels of perceived effort. Quality of leadership, developmental opportunities, and social support from supervisors and colleagues increased the meaning of work levels. In addition, increased perceived stress resulted in higher burnout levels, while increased meaning of work resulted in decreased burnout levels. Finally, higher burnout levels appeared to lead to a higher occupational turnover intention. Obviously, a nursing workforce that is in good physical and psychological condition is only conceivable when health care managers protect the employability of their nursing staff, and when there is a dual responsibility for a sustainable workforce. Additionally, thorough attention for the character of job demands and job resources according to nurses’ age category is necessary in creating meaningful management interventions.
25 January 2011 in Managing Service Quality: An International Journal
Purpose – The aim of this paper is to examine how patients' loyalty, and confidence in their doctors, are influenced by doctors' interaction behavior, namely, listening and explaining behavior. Design/methodology/approach – Primary data were collected through a survey of patients in an advanced developing economy – India. Patients visiting the same specialist doctor more than three times a year, in selected clinics in the city of Mumbai, were asked to complete the study instrument. All the constructs were measured using multiple items and well-established scales were revalidated to suit the context of the research. A total of 320 responses were analyzed to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings – Results confirm that the doctor-patient relationship is positively influenced by the interaction behavior of service providers, i.e. doctors. The study demonstrates that doctors' interaction behavior is instrumental in developing an effective relationship with their patients and boosts patients' confidence in their doctors. Furthermore, effective interaction enhances patients' loyalty to their service providers. Originality/value – This would appear to be the first study of its kind conducted in the context of an advanced developing economy. The study suggests that development of effective communication skills in doctors warrants due attention in medical education. Furthermore, this study validates relevant measurement scales in India's context.
Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to explore the underlying mechanism of customer co-creation in service recovery (co-recovery), and investigates the impact of initiation on customer post-recovery evaluations and behavioural intentions.Design/methodology/approach: – Researchers used a 3 (no co-recovery vs employee-initiated co-recovery vs customer-initiated co-recovery)×2 (male vs female)×2 (western vs eastern customers) between-subject experiential study in a hotel setting.Findings: – When a service employee initiates a co-recovery, customers perceive higher justice, greater satisfaction and a higher tendency to repurchase in the future. But if the customer initiates such a co-recovery, little improvement on these outcomes is found compared to a recovery entirely managed by the company. The effect was moderated by culture: western customers were more sensitive to initiation in the co-recovery process than eastern customers.Research limitations/implications: – Written scenarios using a hotel setting and a technical error were used, and may reduce the applicability of the findings to real life or other service categories or types of error. Subjects used may not be representative of other population groups. Further studies using real life situations, human error and a more diverse population group are recommended.Practical implications: – A positive co-recovery can be achieved by service employees taking initiatives when a problem occurs.Originality/value: – This study extends previous research on co-recovery by investigating the effect of initiation by service employees on customers’ perception of co-creation. Service companies can improve customers’ post-recovery evaluations by inviting them to co-create a feasible solution, and potentially reduce the company's compensation costs.
This study proposes a mediation model that links customer perceived service value to customer loyalty via customer satisfaction. Psychometrically sound measures were selected and a survey was undertaken among 1,200 customers of a Chinese Securities firm with a response rate of 41%. Results show that customer satisfaction does play a mediating role upon the relationship between customer perceived service value and customer loyalty. Our study suggests that customer perceived service quality has a significant effect upon customer satisfaction; customer perception of relational benefits has a positive impact upon customer satisfaction, with trust being the most important indicator; customer satisfaction is positively related with loyalty in terms of positive word of mouth, willingness to pay more and to stay with the business. Moreover, the results indicate that the five dimensions as distinguished in SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al., 1988) are compressed within two dimensions-IT provision and service attitude. Our outcomes suggest that managers should initiate service policies aimed at securing improvement in customer satisfaction.
Customers and employees can co-create a resolution following a service failure through integrating their resources. Their activities and interactions during resource-integration shape the customers' service recovery experiences. Prior research overlooks resource integration between all involved actors in a co-created service recovery process. This research details the process with two empirical studies. Study 1 is a qualitative analysis of narratives of service recovery experiences; Study 2 is a quantitative assessment of scenario-based survey data. The results show that a favourable service recovery experience is resulted from integrating all involved actors' resources in a mutually beneficial manner. Three key resources are financial compensation, service skills including communication and timing. Our findings indicate that co-created service recovery fails in the absence of just one resource or mismatches in their integration. The combined studies reveal that customers use their justice perceptions to assess activities and interactions for resource integration in service recovery.