A Postdigital Perspective on Service Work: Salespeople’s Service Encounters in the Connected Store

Covid-19 has disrupted global markets, accelerated the digital transformation of frontline service, and changed how service organisations, frontline service employees, and consumers interact. This article explores how digitalisation is changing retail service work from a postdigital perspective. The article draws on an ethnography of salespeople’s service encounters in speciality chain stores between July 2015 and August 2021. Using a practice theory framework (the theory of practice architectures), the article explores what conditions form salespeople’s service encounters in connected stores and how retail organisations’ digitalisation of frontline service changes salespeople’s practice of service encounters. The contributions of this article to the ongoing debate over the digitalisation of service work are twofold. On the theoretical plane, the article provides an alternative framework to labour process theory for exploring and describing service work organised around digital technologies. Secondly, it uncovers the conditions that are changing salespeople’s practice of service encounters, along with attributes associated with service work and emotional labour skills. The research shows that the connected service encounter is characterised by postdigital dialogue that involves new roles and skills in frontline service work. Overall, the findings contribute to a better understanding of how digitalisation changes action and interaction in service encounters from an employee perspective.

The role of initiative climate as a resource caravan passageway in developing proactive service performance

PurposeThe study aims to examine the role of initiative climate as a resource caravan passageway in engaging employees and developing a proactive frontline service workforce to identify the mechanisms whereby scarce resources efficiently yielding the desired outcomes can help organizations improve productivity and gain competitive advantage, thereby helping clarify the leadership–performance relationship in service organizations.Design/methodology/approachThe study employed a quantitative research design with a cross-sectional survey conducted among frontline hospitality employees in Malaysia. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to examine the hypothesized relationships.FindingsThe initiative climate is significant as a resource caravan passageway to transmit the positive impact of interpersonal leadership onto the engagement and proactive performance of frontline hospitality employees in whom initiative climate and employee engagement sequentially mediated the relationship between interpersonal leadership and proactive service performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe online data collection procedure conducted through LinkedIn and Facebook and cross-sectional, self-reported survey method are significant limitations of the current study.Practical implicationsThe findings of the study will aid in developing organizational interventions for an engaged and proactive frontline service workforce, as interpersonal leadership can positively impact the engagement and proactive behavior of frontline service employees via initiative climate. Therefore, hospitality managers should value interpersonal leadership and initiative climate as coexisting organizational resources.Originality/valueThe study shows the significance of initiative climate in the relationships between interpersonal leadership, employee engagement and the proactive performance of frontline service employees.

Attitudes toward service robots: analyses of explicit and implicit attitudes based on anthropomorphism and construal level theory

Purpose Building on both the uncanny valley and construal level theories, the analyses detailed in this paper aims to address customers’ explicit and implicit attitudes toward various service robots, categorized by the degree of their human-like appearance, namely, mechanoids (low human-likeness), humanoids (medium human-likeness) and realistic robots (high human-likeness). Design/methodology/approach The analyses reflect a mixed-method approach, across three studies. A qualitative study uses focus groups to identify consensual attitudes. An experiment measures self-reported, explicit attitudes toward the three categories of robots. Another experiment explores customers’ implicit attitudes (unconscious and unintentional) toward robots, using three implicit association tests. Findings Customers express both positive and negative attitudes toward service robots. The realistic robots lead to both explicit and implicit negative attitudes, suggesting that customers tend to reject these robots in frontline service settings. Robots with lower human-likeness levels generate relatively more positive attitudes and are accepted to nearly the same extent as human employees in hospitality and tourism contexts. Practical implications Because customers reject, both consciously and unconsciously, very human-like robots in service encounters, managers should leverage this key finding, along with the more detailed results, to inform their strategic introduction of robots into hospitality frontline service settings. Originality/value The combined qualitative and quantitative studies specify and clarify customers’ implicit and explicit attitudes toward robots with different levels of human-likeness, in the real-world setting of hospitality and tourism services. Such insights can inform continued research into the effects of these service innovations.

Customer acceptance of frontline service robots in retail banking: A qualitative approach

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore what drives customer acceptance of frontline service robots (FSR), as a result of their interaction experiences with FSR in the context of retail banking services.Design/methodology/approachApplications of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology and service robot acceptance model frame the exploration of customers’ interaction experiences with physical FSR to explain acceptance. A thematic analysis of information obtained through observations, focus groups and participant interviews was applied to identify themes.FindingsThis study identifies 16 dimensions that group into five main themes that influence customer acceptance of FSR in retail banking services: (1) utilitarian aspect, (2) social interaction, (3) customer responses toward FSR, (4) customer perspectives of the company brand and (5) individual and task heterogeneity. Themes 1 and 2 are labeled confirmed themes based on existing theoretical frameworks used; themes 3–5 are additional themes.Practical implicationsThis study provides actionable suggestions to allow managers to reflect on their strategy and consider ways to design and improve the delivery of services that involve FSR.Originality/valueThis study adds to our limited knowledge of how human-robot interaction research in robotics translates to a relatively new research area in frontline services and provides a step toward a comprehensive FSR acceptance model.