The impact of occupational stereotypes in human-centered service systems

Value Cocreation in Health Care: Systematic Review

Background

Value cocreation in health care (VCCH), mainly based on service-dominant logic, emphasizes that participants, including both patients and physicians, can effectively enroll in the health care value creation process. Effective VCCH is of great significance for realizing value-based health care and improving doctor-patient relationships. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of VCCH is critical. However, the current literature on VCCH is fragmented and not well studied.

Objective

The goal of the research is to investigate the antecedents, consequences, and dimensions of VCCH by systematically searching, selecting, summarizing, and evaluating relevant literature.

Methods

English-language articles on VCCH in the Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus databases published from January 2008 to December 2019 were identified. The articles were screened using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses protocol, and the quality of studies included were appraised using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool.

Results

Out of the 181 publications initially identified through the bibliographic searches, 28 publications met the inclusion criteria. This review summarizes antecedents, consequences, and dimensions of VCCH, as well as possible associations among them. An integrative framework is also proposed for mapping the literature of VCCH grounded on social cognitive theory to reveal the whole process of VCCH.

Conclusions

The findings of this systematic review provide implications for continued development of VCCH and contribute to inspire more research in the future.

How industry and occupational stereotypes shape consumers' trust, value and loyalty judgments concerning service brands

Purpose

Longitudinal studies have shown that consumer satisfaction has increased over the last 15 years, whereas trust and loyalty have decreased during the same period. This finding contradicts the trust–value–loyalty model (TVLM), which posits that higher satisfaction increases consumers' trust, value and loyalty levels. To explain this counterintuitive trend, this study draws on models of trust formation to integrate the stereotype content model and the TVLM. It argues that consumers' occupational and industry stereotypes influence their trust, value and loyalty judgments through their trusting beliefs regarding frontline employees and management practices/policies.

Design/methodology/approach

The study was conducted among 476 consumers who were randomly assigned to one of five service industries (apparel retail, airlines, hotels, health insurance or telecommunications services) and asked to rate their current service provider from that industry.

Findings

The results suggest that both occupational and industry stereotypes influence consumers' trusting beliefs and trust judgments, although only the effects of industry stereotypes are transferred to consumers' loyalty judgments.

Research limitations/implications

The results of the study indicate that industry stereotypes have become increasingly negative over the last decades, which has a dampening effect on the positive effects of satisfaction.

Practical implications

This study provides guidelines for practitioners regarding the management of frontline employees and the development of consumer trust, value and loyalty.

Originality/value

This is the first study to propose and test an explanation for the counterintuitive trend concerning customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty. It is also the first to examine the roles of multiple stereotypes in the relationship between consumers and service providers.

Accountable algorithms? The ethical implications of data-driven business models

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to identify, analyze and explain the ethical implications that can result from the datafication of service.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses a midrange theorizing approach to integrate currently disconnected perspectives on technology-enabled service, data-driven business models, data ethics and business ethics to introduce a novel analytical framework centered on data-driven business models as the general metatheoretical unit of analysis. The authors then contextualize the framework using data-intensive insurance services.

Findings

The resulting midrange theory offers new insights into how using machine learning, AI and big data sets can lead to unethical implications. Centered around 13 ethical challenges, this work outlines how data-driven business models redefine the value network, alter the roles of individual actors as cocreators of value, lead to the emergence of new data-driven value propositions, as well as novel revenue and cost models.

Practical implications

Future research based on the framework can help guide practitioners to implement and use advanced analytics more effectively and ethically.

Originality/value

At a time when future technological developments related to AI, machine learning or other forms of advanced data analytics are unpredictable, this study instigates a critical and timely discourse within the service research community about the ethical implications that can arise from the datafication of service by introducing much-needed theory and terminology.

Engaging customers with employees in service encounters

Purpose

Keeping both employees and customers highly engaged has become a critical issue for service firms, especially for high-contact and highly customized services. Therefore, it is essential to engage employees and customers during service interactions for better service outcomes. However, past research on employee and customer engagement has primarily focused on brands and organizations. Little research has concentrated on service interactions as the objects of engagement. To fill this research gap, this study aims to clarify and define service engagement behaviors (SEBs), identify various employee and customer SEBs and develop a model to investigate the relationships between these behaviors.

Design/methodology/approach

A theoretical framework was developed based on social contagion theory and service-dominant (S-D) logic to explore the effects of employee SEBs on customer SEBs through customer perceptions of relational energy and interaction cohesion. Dyadic survey data collected from 293 customer-employee pairs in various high-contact and highly customized service industries were examined through structural equation modeling.

Findings

Results show that employee SEBs (service role involvement, customer orientation behavior and customer empowerment behavior) positively influence relational energy and interaction cohesion, which in turn affect customer SEBs (service exploration behavior and service coordination behavior).

Originality/value

This study represents pioneering research to conceptualize SEBs. Different from the extant literature on engagement, SEBs capture the proactive and collaborative engagement behaviors of employees and customers in service interactions. Various employee and customer SEBs were identified and an empirical model was proposed and tested to investigate the effect of employee SEBs on customer SEBs through relational energy and interaction cohesion.