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Customer needs in service settings are idiosyncratic. Responding to these unique needs requires frontline employees to be creative. Little research looks at the drivers of service employee creativity. We aim to fill that void by assessing two potential key creativity drivers, control mechanisms and management orientations. We collected data from frontline employees and their managers and used multilevel mediation modeling, configurational modeling and analysis of necessary conditions. Multilevel analysis revealed that the influence of process and social controls on employee creativity are fully mediated by self-control, whereas the effects of cultural control are partially mediated. The effect of the service orientation of management on employee creativity is partially mediated by self-control, whereas the effect of profit orientation is fully mediated. Causal models from employee control mechanisms and management orientation configurations provide a deeper insight of sufficient conditions leading to employee creativity. Necessary employee control mechanisms and management orientations are identified.

Using the theories of complexity and the spiral of silence, this paper aims to understand how combinations of perceived news, brand gender, and participation explain conditions leading to brand love and customers’ attitudinal loyalty within online contexts. Drawing from a two-stage, mixed-method approach, results indicate that passive participation and brand masculinity are necessary to increase love and attitudinal loyalty to a brand, while perceived news informativeness and entertainment, brand femininity, and active participation are sufficient but not necessary. The study offers theoretical and practical insights that may guide further research and strengthen marketing attempts to improve customer engagement with online fan pages.

This study contributes to the literature by offering a novel analytical approach to solving complex interactions of tourism expenditure antecedents, advancing the theoretical reasoning behind the way in which socioeconomic indicators of prosperity combine to explain tourism expenditure on an international scale. The study explored a variety of configurations sufficient for simulation of both high and low scores of outbound tourism expenditures that have policy implications in both destination countries and countries of origin. We used complexity theory and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze a composite score of 5-year data for 105 countries. The predictive validity results indicated the capacity of the proposed model to predict future outcome using other samples. The results expand our knowledge of the asymmetrical relationships of tourism expenditure and its antecedents.

This study aims to craft and test a theory by examining the combinations of causal antecedents for predicting intention to purchase tourism weather insurance (IPTWI) and destination loyalty. Weather expectation, disconfirmation, perceived risk, and visit time are used as ingredients of complex configurations. To assess occurrences of both positive and negative contrarian cases, cross-tabulations were performed with data from tourists who traveled to a Mediterranean island (North Cyprus). Asymmetrical fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) data analyses were run to identify recipes of antecedent conditions for predicting high scores in IPTWI and loyalty. Results from fsQCA support the major tenets of complexity theory. Apart from fit validity of the measurement model, evidence of predictive validity of algorithm models is provided. This study tests an empirical model with complexity theory that contributes to the literature by providing new insights into the configural conditions indicating high score for IPTWI and loyalty, which is useful for proposing new risk-attached services (e.g., tourism weather insurance).