Frontline employee motivation to participate in service innovation implementation

Abstract

Companies today face the challenge not only of designing innovative customer-focused service strategies to compete and grow but also of translating such strategies into results through successful execution. Experience and research demonstrate the difficulty of such an execution, but little research in marketing has focused on strategy implementation, particularly at the employee level. Prior research has suggested that frontline employee participation is critical to successful innovation implementation, especially in service contexts. We develop a theoretical model to investigate the complex role of motivation in engaging employee participation in service innovation implementation and test it with field data from a real-world context.The study contributes to motivation research in marketing by adapting and extending a hierarchical conceptualization from psychology that incorporates three levels of motivation: global, contextual, and situational. We also investigate the antecedents managers can control to increase employee motivation to participate in implementation efforts and subsequently to improve participation behaviors that are critical to the successful implementation of a customer service innovation.

Linking internal marketing with customer outcomes

“…Second, the extended network of retail branches renders branch managers as key actors in implementing organizational strategies at the branch level, by providing appropriate guidelines, directions and support to front-line employees, as well as through their personal interaction with customers. In such service contexts, strategic orientations will not succeed unless the branch manager and the employees remain aligned with superordinate goals (Cadwallader et al, 2010). Furthermore, branch manager's alignment with firm's strategic vision is a key determinant of different decision frameworks and strategy implementation.…”

The trade-off of servicing empowerment on employees’ service performance: examining the underlying motivation and workload mechanisms

“…Intrinsic motivation refers to the extent to which a person is inner-directed and fascinated with a task, such that he or she engages in it for the sake of the task itself (Utman, 1997). Recent research offers a hierarchy of three levels of motivation: global, contextual, and situational (see Cadwallader et al 2010). Global motivation involves relatively enduring individual differences (e.g., extroversion); contextual motivation addresses generalized motives in broad life contexts, such as sports, work, or technology.…”

“…Global motivation involves relatively enduring individual differences (e.g., extroversion); contextual motivation addresses generalized motives in broad life contexts, such as sports, work, or technology. We adopt Cadwallader et al's (2010) concept of situational motivation, which refers to the motivation a person experiences when he or she is involved in an activity. Specifically, we focus on employees' situational motivation to perform the task of serving customers (hereafter, employees' task motivation).…”

New Service Development Process in Intermodal Transport: The Case of Turkey

“…"Assignment of individual roles and responsibilities", "joining the top management in selecting team members" and "observing the service delivery trial by the firm's personnel" are determined as the least applied activities. However, as indicated by Cadwallader et al, (2010) [53], employee participation is vital for successful implementation of NSD. Furthermore, Alam (2014) [35] claimed that previous models had unnecessary details to meet the needs of NSD, thus provided shorter model thanks to the digitalization, especially with the help of social media.…”