The measurement of meaning

Innovation researchers increasingly pay attention to service industries, resulting in a large amount of literature on success factors in new service development. However, the role of individual co-workers in innovation is still underexposed. This paper investigated the drivers of innovative behaviour of individual co-workers, which is considered to be a major determinant of incremental innovation. From the literature seven constructs were derived that are often discussed as drivers of innovation, but have not been tested as determinants of individual co-workers' innovative behaviour. Survey data were collected from 360 persons working in knowledge-intensive service firms. Based on a regression analysis, it appeared that perceptions of job challenge, autonomy, strategic attention and external contacts are positively related to innovative behaviour of individual co-workers. Also, operating in a market where firms compete on differentiation had a positive impact. On the other hand, a firm climate supportive to innovation and a high variation in demand did not affect innovative behaviour in a direct manner.

Determinants of Co-workers' Innovative Behaviour: An Investigation into Knowledge-intensive Services

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between innovative culture, innovation efforts, and their performance among knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). Innovation intensity is evaluated in the technical and administrative domains. Performance indicators include customer-related outcomes and market and financial results relative to competition. To provide insight into how innovativeness contributes to sustaining a KIBS' competitiveness, the mediating role of its predisposition to involve customers and front-line employees in new service development is also considered. Design/methodology/approach – In accordance with the objectives of the research, and from an extensive review of the literature, the authors develop a conceptual model and test it on a sample of 154 Spanish KIBS using structural equation modelling. Findings – The results show that KIBS' appraisal of customers' and front-line employees' participation in new service co-creation is strongly determined by ...

An assessment of innovativeness in KIBS: implications on KIBS' co-creation culture, innovation capability, and performance

From a Service-Dominant Logic (S-DL) perspective, employees constitute operant resources that firms can draw to enhance the outcomes of innovation efforts. While research acknowledges that frontline employees (FLEs) constitute, through service encounters, a key interface for the transfer of valuable external knowledge into the firm, the range of potential benefits derived from FLE-driven innovation deserves more investigation. Using a sample of knowledge intensive business services firms (KIBS), this study examines how the collaboration with FLEs along the new service development (NSD) process, namely FLE co-creation, impacts on service innovation performance following two routes of different effects. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) results indicate that FLE co-creation benefits the NS success among FLEs and firm’s customers, the constituents of the resources route. FLE co-creation also has a positive effect on the NSD speed, which in turn enhances the NS quality. NSD speed and NS quality integrate the operational route, which proves to be the most effective path to impact the NS market performance. Accordingly, KIBS managers must value their FLEs as essential partners to achieve successful innovation from an internal and external perspective, and develop the appropriate mechanisms to guarantee their effective involvement along the NSD process.

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Frontline employees’ collaboration in industrial service innovation: routes of co-creation’s effects on new service performance

During product recovery, firms rely on their customer service agents to recover customers’ product failures and deliver superior customer service. However, customers who contact the firm about a product failure often are dissatisfied, which makes customer service agents’ jobs challenging. Therefore, firms continuously try to improve their internal customer service operations to increase benefits for customer service agents and, by extension, their customers. The authors hypothesize that the way firms design (agent codesign and design acceleration) and implement (agent enablement) an internal customer service innovation has direct and joint effects on the magnitude of benefits of the innovation to customer service agents, termed internal innovation magnitude. The authors test the conceptual model using data on 38 internal customer service innovations at a Fortune 500 high-technology firm. The findings extend the internal marketing literature by demonstrating that service employees represent a critical sour...

Developing Customer Service Innovations for Service Employees: The Effects of NSD Characteristics on Internal Innovation Magnitude:

This paper investigates the possibilities of formally training managers for effective informal communications in the workplace. Although business communication is taught extensively in most of the B-schools and in the corporate world (through training programs on presentation skills, meeting management, etc), scant attention is paid to training students or managers on how to deal with informal communication, i.e., grapevine activity, rumor, gossip or any other communication which does not fall in the purview of “formal communication“. Research has conclusively indicated that informal communication can affect decision making in organizations- favorably or otherwise. In this paper, the role of informal communications is established through extant literature review. After critical evaluation of variables, conceptual models are proposed for “informal communication” and “training managers in effective informal communication”

Training Managers for “between You and Me” Experiences

The need for developing new services organically is well recognized. Extant review of literature reveals that various issues pertaining to NSD (New Service Development)/Service innovation like NSD initiation strategies, internal functional integration, need for simultaneous involvement of employees, evaluation of NSD and measuring the performance of new service, leadership role, role of customers, communication, factors influencing innovative co-worker behavior, etc., have been investigated.However, in comparison to New Product Development (NPD), New Service Development (NSD) has received significantly less attention. Innovations that are initiated and implemented by individuals have been largely bypassed as most of the studies have investigated NSD at firm level or project level. This lack of attention is in-spite of the recognition that employees (customer contact employees in case of service firms) can be major contributors of blockbuster new ideas.Notwithstanding the benefits, the role of customer con...

Rajendra Nargundkar

Papers

Training Managers for “between You and Me” Experiences

New Service Development (NSD): Role of Customer Contact Executives