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This study aims to extend our understanding of the customer-service team relationship from a new angle, that is, the customer psychological contract. This study adopts the psychological contract theory, proposes and empirically tests a dynamic process of customer psychological contract with the sales teams. In particular, this study examines the relationships between customer psychological contract breach, violation, and satisfaction. In addition, it identifies sales team exhaustion, and customer past positive experience as the conditions which moderate the link between customer psychological contract breach and violation. Using multisource data collection from matched 263 sales team members with 1,003 customers nested in 88 sales teams, the results from multilevel modeling show that customer psychological contract breach leads to a high level of perceived violation, which in turn reduces customer satisfaction. Although sales team exhaustion amplifies the positive impact of customer psychological contract breach on violation, customer past positive experience diminishes such impact. Overall, this study provides a unique contribution to existing literature on the service organization, psychological contract, and the management of customer and service team interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neo‐capitalistic approaches to value creation have sometimes developed a bad reputation in terms of sustainability and care for the environment. Yet, there are examples to the contrary emphasising a concern for sustainable capitalism. Our literature synthesis suggests that there is a lack of understanding of the sustainability mechanisms—ways of working helping companies to achieve their leadership in sustainability and maintain it over time. We contribute by addressing this deficiency and specifying four discrete mechanisms which we call the 4S model. Specifically, we apply this model to the cases of two leading exponents of sustainability—Unilever and Patagonia—to explain how companies can operate as forces to change business practice and improve sustainability having regard to people, planet, and profits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Previous research demonstrates that high-involvement work practices ( HIWPs) may be associated with burnout (emotional exhaustion and depersonalization); however, to date, the process through which HIWPs influence burnout is not clear. This article examined the impact of HIWPs on long-term burnout (emotional exhaustion and depersonalization) by considering the mediating role of person-organization fit (P-O fit) in this relationship. The study used a time-lagged design and was conducted in a Canadian general hospital among health care personnel. Findings from structural equation modeling (N = 185) revealed that perceived HIWPs were positively associated with P-O fit. There was no direct effect of HIWPs on burnout; rather, P-O fit fully mediated the relationship between employee perceptions of HIWPs and burnout. This study fills a void in the HR and burnout literature by demonstrating the role that P-O fit has in explaining how HIWPs alleviate emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional service firms (PSFs) play an important role in the knowledge-based economy. Their success is highly dependent on their people, the knowledge resources they possess, and how they use these resources. However, how to systematically manage human resources to attain high performance is not fully understood. This study addresses this issue by investigating the linkage mechanisms through which high-performance work systems (HPWS) influence the performance of PSFs. We integrate resource-based and dynamic capability theories in order to identify and investigate two intervening mechanisms that link HR practices to firm performance. The first mechanism is the intellectual capital resources comprising the human, social, and organizational capital that HPWS create. The second mechanism is the uses to which both HPWS and resources can be applied, operationalized as organizational ambidexterity, the simultaneous exploitation of existing knowledge and exploration of new knowledge. These mechanisms are hypothesized to link HPWS to firm performance in the form of a practices-resources-uses-performance linkage model. Results from a longitudinal study of 93 accounting firms support this linkage model. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of individualism/collectivism (I/C) orientations and perceived task interdependence on the two attitudes of team loyalty and pro-social behavior in blue-collar employees is studied. It is found that both perceived task interdependence and I/C has positive effects on team loyalty and pro-social behavior but further research is needed among other types of employees, cross-national cultures, other types of interdependencies and more expanded scale of items.

The individualism/collectivism (I/C) orientations are examined by taking employee attitudes and behavioral intentions into consideration. The results indicate that levels of equity perception are related to, different effects of employee attitudes, which depends on the level of I/C orientations.