Individual Assignment: Service Performance

Service performance, referred to employees’ behaviour of serving and helping customers is a crucial issue for the service management (Grizzle et al., 2009). As Liao and Chuang (2004) has explained that, to the extent employees are able to deliver high-quality service, customers are more likely to generate favourable evaluations of service encounters, experience higher satisfaction, and increase their purchases and the frequency of their future visits. Therefore, it is important to understand what predicts employee service performance (p. 47). In fact, both academic scholars and managerial partitions have explored how different factors, e.g. organizational influence, employees’ own attitude or cognition, individual differences, etc., may impact on front-line service workers service or job performance (Brown et al., 2002; Castanheira, 2016; Dudley et al., 2006; Grandey, 2003; Hur et al., 2016; Raud and Liao, 2012)
Drawing on extant literature, you are required to critically discuss what, how, and why different factors can influence service workers’ service performance.
Reference:
Brown, T. J., Mowen, J. C., Donavan, D. T. & Licata, J. W. (2002). The customer orientation of service workers: personality trait effects on self-and supervisor performance ratings. Journal of Marketing Research, 39(1), 110-119.
Castanheira, F. (2016). Perceived social impact, social worth, and job performance: Mediation by motivation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 37(6), 789-803.
Dudley, N. M., Orvis, K. A., Lebiecki, J. E., & Cortina, J. M. (2006). A meta-analytic investigation of conscientiousness in the prediction of job performance: Examining the intercorrelations and the incremental validity of narrow traits. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(1), 40-57.
Grandey, A. A. (2003). When “the show must go on”: Surface acting and deep acting as determinants of emotional exhaustion and peer-rated service delivery. Academy of Management Journal, 46(1), 86-96.
Grizzle, J., Zablah, A., Brown, T., Mowen, J., & Lee, J. (2009). Employee customer orientation in context: how the environment moderates the influence of customer orientation on performance outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(5), 1227-1242.
Hur, W-M., Moon, T., & Rhee, S-Y. (2016). Exploring the relationships between compassion at work, thee valuative perspective of positive work-related identity, service employee creativity, and job performance. Journal of Services Marketing, 30(1), 103-114.
Liao, H., & Chuang, A. (2004). A multilevel investigation of factors influencing employee service performance and customer outcomes. Academy of Management Journal, 47(1), 41-58.
Raub, S., & Liao, H. (2012). Doing the right thing without being told: Joint effects of initiative climate and general self-efficacy on employee proactive customer service performance. Journal of Applied Psychology. 97(3), 651-667.
Word count: 1,500
(The word limit includes quotations in the main text, but excludes the reference or bibliography at the end.)
Your work should be in a creative, critical, logical, and evaluative manner. Ensure that your arguments are clear and logical and where appropriate include academic sources, i.e. academic journal articles. Show in a bibliography an appropriate breadth and depth of references relevant to the topic. In addition to some direct factors, interactive factors such as mediating factors and moderation factors may also be discussed, which will add weight to your points raised. More guidance will be provided at the lecture.
Module Learning Outcomes:
In this assessment the following learning outcomes will be covered:
• Discuss how the services sector operates in developed economies.
• Define and illustrate the main components of services marketing theory.
• Critically appraise the way in which this theory can be practically applied in the service sector.
• Develop and justify alternative marketing approaches that can be used by service managers.
• Critically evaluate research related to services marketing.
Your work must be correctly referenced throughout in the Harvard format.
The deadline for this coursework is Thursday, 7th March 2019. Please submit your work via Canvas on the deadline by 12pm (GMT+0). 5% penalty will be received for each day of late submission. Your assignment should be word processed and produced in an appropriate style. The work should be completed on an individual basis.
Word limit: 1500 words excluding references or bibliography at the end. The number of words in your work can be 10% less than the total word count allowance. However, to ensure optimal length consistency and therefore marking fairness, submissions exceeding the total word count will be expected to receive penalties. The spacing should be 1.5 or 2. Accepted fonts are either 12, Times New Roman or 11 Ariel.
Marking Criteria:
Knowledge and Understanding 30%
Identifies, explains, draws on appropriate theories, models, literature to demonstrate depth and breadth of reading to address the question
Application 20%
Application of theory or practical examples given appropriate to context
Analysis and Recommendations 40%
Evaluation and critical analysis of the topic, synthesis of ideas/concepts, appropriate justification and recommendations
Structure and Presentation 10%
Content is organised and appropriate; spelling, punctuation, grammar, layout,
accurate Harvard Referencing style, writing style academic/professional