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Human Resource Management Review

Call for Papers

Special Issue on:

 Organizational Drivers of Customer Service Outcomes

Human Resource Management Review announces a call for papers for a special issue on the organizational drivers of customer service.

The special issue is edited by S. Douglas Pugh (Virginia Commonwealth University) and Mahesh Subramony (Northern Illinois University).

Customer outcomes have gained prominence in contemporary organizational and human resource management (HRM) literatures.  Influenced by work in services marketing highlighting the differences between goods and services (e.g., intangibility, simultaneous production and consumption) management researchers have focused on the organizational drivers of customer experiences and outcomes. The earliest trends in customer-focused organizational literature included investigations of unit-level variables such as service climate, as well as individual-level approaches rooted in trait theory (e.g., service orientation) and emotional labor theory. Simultaneously, the practitioner literature focused on linkage research and the service-profit-chain, both of which emphasized the quantitative links between employee attitudes, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.

Current organizational research has expanded to include a variety of psychological and unit-level constructs including team relational coordination, psychological empowerment, customer-focused leadership, organizational identity, employee turnover, and work engagement. Customer-related variables have also gained prominence as proximal performance outcomes of high performance work practices and human capital stocks and flows within strategic HRM literature. Finally, multilevel and longitudinal approaches are beginning to influence cutting edge theoretical and methodological developments.

Clearly it is time to take stock of these advances and predict future trends. In this special issue we invite papers that assess the current state of our knowledge and develop new theoretical perspectives on the organizational drivers of customer service and related outcomes.  We encourage submissions that address issues at the individual, team, or organizational level of analysis; and encourage submissions from multiple disciplinary perspectives.  Specific topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Personality (e.g., emotional intelligence, customer orientation) and service delivery
• Emotion regulation and emotional labor and its effects on customer experiences
• Direct and interactive effects of strategic organizational climates on customer outcomes
• The role of HRM systems in driving customer service
• Developments in training for service organizations
• The impact of employee and/or customer diversity on customer experiences
• Methodological challenges in linking organizational processes to customer outcomes
• Justice and customer service
• Individual versus organizational drivers of customer experiences and cross-level effects

Consistent with HRMR's priorities, conceptual and theoretical papers are encouraged, although quantitative (i.e. meta-analytic) review papers that make a theoretical contribution may also be included.  Papers should be in pdf format and submitted to Doug Pugh (sdpugh@vcu.edu) by March 15, 2014.