SHORT-ANSWER ESSAYS - Cengage EMEA



SHORT-ANSWER ESSAYS

Chapter 11: People Issues – Managing Service Employees

1. Discuss the role of boundary spanning personnel.

ANS:

• Boundary-spanning personnel have two main roles: information transfer and representation. Boundary spanners collect information from the environment and feed it back into the organization. Boundary-spanning personnel are also the organization's personal representatives.

2. Discuss the methods in which marketing can reduce the sources of conflict felt by its employees.

ANS:

• Marketing can reduce the person/role conflict of its employees by being sensitive to employees’ feelings and by actively seeking input from employees about issues. Similarly, marketing can help reduce conflicts between the organization and its clients by making sure that customer expectations are consistent with capabilities of the service system. Finally, inter-client conflicts can often be reduced if the customers are relatively homogeneous in their expectations.

3. Discuss the benefits and costs associated with empowerment.

ANS:

• Benefits associated with empowerment include quicker response to customer needs, quicker response to dissatisfied customers, employees who feel better about their jobs and themselves, employees who interact with customers with more warmth and enthusiasm, and increased word-of-mouth advertising and customer retention. On the other hand, the costs associated with empowerment include a larger dollar investment in selection and training of personnel, higher labour costs, slower or inconsistent service delivery, violations of fair play or perceived preferential treatment, and giveaways and bad decisions.

4. Discuss the contingency approach to empowerment.

ANS:

• One method for determining the appropriate level of empowerment is by examining this decision based on a contingency basis. The five contingencies include the firm's basic business strategy, the tie to the customer, technology, business environment, and the types of people that are employed by the firm. Each contingency is evaluated on a scale ranging from 1 to 5. The lower the score, the more appropriate a production line approach becomes. Conversely, the higher the score, greater levels of empowerment should be employed.

5. Discuss the relevance of the Service-Profit Chain as it relates to the Market-

focused Management approach.

ANS:

• Employee satisfaction is derived from a workplace and job design which facilitates internal service quality. The links in the Service-Profit Chain reveal that employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction are directly related. Employee satisfaction is linked with increases in productivity and external service value. External service value is linked with customer satisfaction and the benefits of customer loyalty. The net effects of customer loyalty are increased revenues and profitability for the firm. The outcomes associated with employee satisfaction--external service values, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, revenue growth, and increased profitability provide feedback and reinforce the company's internal service quality and employee satisfaction.

6. Discuss the three sources of conflict for boundary-spanning service workers.

ANS:

• Boundary spanners face three main sources of conflict: person/role conflicts, organization/client conflicts, and inter-client conflicts. With person/role conflicts, a bad fit between an individual’s self-perception and the specific role the person must play in an organization. A more salient conflict for most front-line workers is the conflict between their two bosses – the organization and the client. This organization/client conflicts arises when a customer requests services that violate the rules of the organization. Inter-client conflicts arise because of the number of clients who influence one another’s experience. This occurs most often when the service worker is serving multiple clients at the same time.

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