We conducted a comprehensive review of empirical research related to frontline service employees over the past four decades (1980-2020). Utilizing a bibliometric mapping approach, we identified 630 relevant articles appearing in service, management, marketing, and applied/occupational health psychology journals. Our analysis identified five distinct research clusters: (a) collective predictors and effects, (b) services encounters, (c) emotional regulation and management, (d) customer orientation, and (e) service stress and strain. In this article, we describe the nature of current research within each of these clusters and identify future directions within and across different clusters for scholarly work. Our review highlights the conceptual and methodological richness within the clusters and calls out for interdisciplinary scholarship to build a diverse, yet unified field of service work research.

The use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the workplace has gained considerable research attention in the occupational health field due to its effects on employee stress and well-being. Consequently, new ICT-related constructs have proliferated in occupational health research, resulting in a need to take stock of both potential redundancies and deficiencies in the current measures. This paper disentangles ICT-related constructs, developing a taxonomy of ICT-related constructs in terms of ICT demands, resources, motivation, use, and strains. We then integrate this taxonomy with stress and motivation theories to identify three key implications for ICT and workplace health research and practices in terms of providing suggestions on understudied areas for building better theories, highlighting important psychometric issues for building better constructs and measures, and offering recommendations for building better interventions. This review aims to serve as a guide for researchers to move forward with the current state of research and provide recommendations for organizations in terms of both potential repercussions and best practices for ICT use in the workplace.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as portable technology devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, and laptop computers) and software packages (e.g., virtual private network) have allowed employees to stay connected to their work teams both during and after work hours (Towers, Duxbury, Higgin, & Thomas, 2006). Despite the benefits of flexible work arrangements (Hill et al., 2008), engaging in work tasks beyond the boundaries of the workplace (e.g., at home) predicts negative behavioral and psychological outcomes, including work-family conflicts and impaired recovery experiences (Boswell & Olson-Buchanan, 2007; Derks, Duin, Tims, & Bakker, 2015; Park & Jex, 2011). Even within the workplace, electronic communication can increase interruption, referred to temporarily shifting one's focus from a primary work task to either another work-related request or nonwork-related messages, which in turn leads to increased work exhaustion and negative affect (

BackgroundWorking adults spend most of their leisure time watching TV. In this paper, we seek to clarify how experiences of psychological need fulfillment and well‐being differ when watching TV and engaging in other leisure activities. We suggest that, compared to other leisure activities, watching TV is equally conducive to fulfilling needs for: (a) relaxation and detachment from stress and (b) autonomy, but is less conducive to fulfilling needs for (c) meaning, (d) mastery, and (e) affiliation and thus also less conducive to promoting subjective wellbeing.MethodsWe tested our predictions in two day reconstruction studies and a daily diary study.ResultsPeople experienced similar levels of detachment and relaxation when watching TV and engaging in other types of leisure. However, they experienced less fulfillment of other needs, and lower levels of satisfaction and some aspects of affective well‐being, when watching TV compared to other activities. Further, unlike time spent watching TV, daily time spent in physical activities was positively associated with positive activated affect.ConclusionsGiven that watching TV tends to be associated with lower levels of need fulfillment and well‐being than other leisure activities, leisure choices may be an important target for improving employee well‐being.

PurposeHealth care delivery is experiencing a multi-faceted epidemic of suffering among patients and care providers. Compassion is defined as noticing, feeling and responding to suffering. However, compassion is typically seen as an individual rather than a more systemic response to suffering and cannot match the scale of the problem as a result. The authors develop a model of a compassion system and details its antecedents (leader behaviors and a compassionate human resource (HR) bundle), its climate or the extent that the organization values, supports and rewards expression of compassion and the behaviors and practices through which it is enacted (standardization and customization) and its effects on efficiently reducing suffering and delivering high quality care.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses a conceptual approach that synthesizes the literature in health services, HR management, organizational behavior and service operations to develop a new conceptual model.FindingsThe paper makes three key contributions. First, the authors theorize the central importance of compassion and a collective commitment to compassion (compassion system) to reducing pervasive patient and care provider suffering in health care. Second, the authors develop a model of an organizational compassion system that details its antecedents of leader behaviors and values as well as a compassionate HR bundle. Third, the authors theorize how compassion climate enhances collective employee well-being and increases standardization and customization behaviors that reduce suffering through more efficient and higher quality care, respectively.Originality/valueThis paper develops a novel model of how health care organizations can simultaneously achieve efficiency and quality through a compassion system. Specific leader behaviors and practices that enable compassion climate and the processes through which it achieves efficiency and quality are detailed. Future directions for how other service organizations can replicate a compassion system are discussed.