The Organization of Mental Representations of Pandemic Among Workers of the Socionomic Occupations

The study defines and analyses the organization of the concept of Pandemic. According to psychological interpretation the concept of Pandemic is a mental model that reflects objectified and subjective-evaluative highlighters and influences the coping behaviour in a specific difficult situation. The diagnostic complex included three open-type tasks (a directed associative experiment, problem formulation, and a visual portrait of the concept). The assumption about the specifics of mental representations of the pandemic in medical workers and sales assistants was tested. The results demonstrated that sales assistants had a generalized mental model of the pandemic (a disease around the world) and described different problems in studying the pandemic. Medical specialists working with COVID-19 patients had more differentiated mental representations of the pandemic; they were better aware of the medical and health problems of the pandemic. Mental representations of pandemic among participants included objectified and negative emotional-evaluative descriptions.

Working environment as a knowledge management stimulator

This article aims to analyze knowledge management strategies as a stimulator of job satisfaction for workers dedicated to fast food sales in the city of Montería. It was framed in the descriptive studies, for which a Likert-type questionnaire (validated and reliable) was applied to 8 restaurant chain sales assistants. The main results show the misuse of strategies for knowledge management and the consequences in terms of job satisfaction and its effects on work productivity.

The Smile behind the Sales Counter: Soviet Shop Assistants on the Road to Full Communism

This article explores the role of sales assistants in Soviet retail trade in the 1960s, who were overwhelmingly female. It investigates the causes of and remedies for what was widely perceived to be rude and grudging service. Soviet customers and officials felt entitled to a positive consumer experience, and managers and trade union officials agonized over the ways to promote and incentivize “service with a smile.” In addition to the poor performance of Soviet manufacturing, which produced goods that were difficult to sell, other factors included poor training and minimal education, low prestige, and low pay. This article also highlights the continuities in retail sales culture from the 1920s to the 1960s but emphasizes the increasing role assigned to “emotional labor” as important and necessary work by sales workers.

Examining customer-oriented positive deviance intentions of retail employees

Purpose Occasionally, retail employees “break the rules” in order to help customers. Currently, there is little research on the mechanisms by which a sales assistants’ positive deviance intentions help them attain specific personal and organisational goals. The purpose of this paper is to examine one mechanism, hope, which develops employees’ deviance intentions to provide benefits to the customer, themselves and the organisation. Design/methodology/approach A survey captured responses from 270 frontline employees from the retail and services sector. AMOS 23 was used to conduct measurement, path and mediation analyses. Findings This study highlights the role of employee hope in developing employees’ positive deviance intentions, and improving perceptions of organisational performance. Results demonstrate that the direct positive impact of hope on positive deviance intention was significant. Furthermore, positive deviance intention was found to positively impact employee goal attainment and perceived organisational performance. The authors’ employee hope model offers a better understanding of positive outcomes of employee deviance, suggesting that retail managers should invest resources to build strong employee–organisation relationships. Originality/value This is the first study to empirically demonstrate that employee hope can explain how customer-oriented positive deviance intentions help employee goal attainment and improve their perceptions of organisational performance.

CODE SWITCHING ANALYSIS IN THE NOTES MADE BY THE SALES ASSISSTANTS IN RIPCURL

Language is very important means of communication. It is used to communicate and to give information to others. There are many languages in the world that people can choose their interaction. Choosing one proper language in communication is very important to avoid misunderstanding. People have to choose a particular language and or decide to switch from one to another. The switch from one language to the other one called as code switching. Code switching may occurred in many areas. One of them is tourism area. Thus, this research is design to identify the types of code switching, to analyze the function of the code switching and to find out the factors led the sales assistants code-switch. The data was taken from the log book of Ripcurl (surf shop) that is written by the sales assistants. The data was collected through observation method through note taking techniques. The log book was read and the expressions represent the use of code switching were noted. After the data collected, they were analyzed. Descriptive qualitative method was used to analyze the data. The analysis was conducted through several steps. First, the theory proposed by Poplack (1989) was used to classify the types of code switching produced by Nusa Dua Ripcurl log book. Furthermore, the theory of the function of code switching developed by Apple and Muysken (1987:118-120) was used to analyzed the function of code switching. Keywords: code switching, log book note

How does labour market history influence the access to hiring interviews?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence of the effect of labour market status on the current probability to be invited to a hiring interview. The authors compare the effect of periods of unemployment, part-time job and short-term contracts (STCs). Design/methodology/approach Correspondence tests were conducted for accountants and sales assistants. The authors estimate the discrimination components from the response rate of each candidate by the asymptotic least squares method. Findings The authors find that men with a part-time profile suffer discrimination in both professions. Other differences of treatment are specific: for accountants, the authors find that the probability of success decreases with the time spent in unemployment, while for sales assistants the probability of success is smaller with a history of STCs. Originality/value This study compares the effect of different dimensions of career history (part-time versus full-time, permanent versus short-term, unemployment versus employment) for experienced job candidates. It also proposes an alternative way to exploit the design of a correspondence experiment.

Verbal and Non-verbal Refusal Strategies in English: Refusing Promotions

Since the speech act of refusal is a face-threatening act, it is essential that some strategies be used to soften the refusal to save the listener’s face. Although the domain of refusal strategies is one of the very important domains in the pragmatic aspect in English, none of the studies conducted about the English language in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have studied refusal strategies used by people in this region. This study aims to investigate the strategies that different people in Dubai use to refuse promotions by sales assistants in different shopping malls in Dubai. The data in this study was collected during field observations conducted in two shopping malls in Dubai. The findings in this study show that most participants chose to refuse the promotions non-verbally. They used different refusal strategies such as avoidance, hand gestures, and nodding their heads. Only two verbal refusal expressions were used. The reasons for these findings might be related to different factors such as the different cultural backgrounds of the participants, the level of English proficiency, and the nature of promotions as imposition on people’s privacy. Therefore, in order to enable second language learners to use refusal strategies politely and effectively, English teachers should introduce the different strategies that people might use to refuse offers or suggestions in English.