infonet-economy

This study explores how and when customer feedback influences organizational health, conceptualized as a combination of employee health and organizational performance. Based on affective events theory, we classify both positive and negative customer feedback as affective work events. We expect that these events influence organizational health through their impact on positive affective climate, and that the relationships are moderated by empowerment climate. We tested the model in a dataset consisting of 80 independent organizations with 178 board members, 80 HR representatives, and 10'953 employees. The findings support the expected indirect effects. Furthermore, empowerment climate strengthened the impact of positive customer feedback on organizational health but does not affect the relationship between negative customer feedback and organizational health. By providing first insights into the consequences of both positive and negative customer feedback on organizational health, this study opens a new avenue for scientific inquiry of customer influences on employees at the organizational level.

While complaint management has received much attention, customer compliments and their systematic handling have been largely ignored. Based on two empirical studies, this article suggests that customer compliments bear great potential for benefiting firms, and gives recommendations on how managers can enable, stimulate, and amplify positive customer feedback.

This research examines the interplay of internal versus external communication and employees’ distance to headquarters on employees’ organizational identification. Drawing from construal-level theory and social identity theory, the authors theoretically argue that employees’ psychological distance to headquarters determines the effect of organizational communication measures on employees’ organizational identification. In particular, the degree of construal fit between concreteness versus abstractness of the communication and employees’ psychological distance to headquarters might influence whether internal or external communication will lead to higher organizational identification. Hypotheses were tested via two multilevel field studies comprising the responses of 1,102 employees from an industrial service firm and a retail firm. Study results support the proposed model: Internal communication is superior to target employees with low psychological distance while external communication is superior to target employees with high psychological distance to headquarters. Important theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

In this article compensation regimes as an application of behavioral accounting research in the field of corporate governance are investigated and underlying incentive regimes are described. During the financial crisis 2007-2009 UBS Switzerland revised its compensation regime for executive and non-executive managers. We find that the revised compensation regime incorporates substantial elements of the prevailing behavioral theories of principal-agency and stewardship and that different forms of variable and fixed compensation components are established with the intend to adjust to the specific type of management behavior.

This paper examines the type and temporal development of language in the process of corporate responsibility (CR) standardization. Previous research on CR standardization has addressed the proliferation and organizational embedding of material practices but neglected the analysis of underlying ideational dynamics. Departing from this practice, we introduce a narrative perspective that illuminates the trajectory a CR standard follows, from being formally adopted to becoming collectively accepted as a valid solution to a problem of societal concern. We argue that this perspective helps scholars explore the dynamic interplay between symbolic and material aspects of standardization and understand better the discursive antecedents of coupling processes in organizations. Drawing on the case of the Equator Principles standard in international project finance, we empirically study how narratives create meaning shared by both business firms and their societal observers, thereby exemplifying the analytical merit of a narrative approach to CR standardization.