Front Office Employees Research Articles

Cross Cultural Management: Hybridization of Dutch – Indian Work Practices in Geographically Distributed IT Projects

Business anthropologists can play an important role in the debate on cross cultural management. Unfortunately, studies on cross-cultural management are dominated by cultural value models, such as those described by Hofstede (1980), Adler (1986), Hall (1976) and Trompenaars (1993). These single and multiple dimensional models have narrowed the debate on cross-cultural management. To move away from these cultural values studies and open up new directions of cross-cultural research this paper focuses on the question of which collaborative practices emerge in the interface of Western and Indian branches of four Multinational IT Service Providers (MITSP); IBM, Accenture, Atos Origin and Philips. As a consequence of Global Sourcing strategies, front and back office employees in MITSP’s are now collaborating in geographically distributed project teams in the development and maintenance of client software. The in-depth case study was executed in the Netherlands and in India in the period of 2005 to 2007. The findings suggest that all companies formally strive for synergy but in the daily cooperation between the project teams power struggles and ethnocentric strategies dominate. The new cultural practices that emerge are a reflection of these power struggles between the Dutch and Indian project teams.

An Insight Into the Suitability Practice: The Standard Questionnaire Dilemma

With the introduction of the MiFID, the European Regulator has formalized the need for financial firms to get to know their customers. To do this, the Directive requires financial operators to assess the suitability and appropriateness of any financial service or product that is proposed to a client. Depending on the result of the suitability and appropriateness questionnaire, investors can be provided with different services and products according to their needs. Unfortunately, the Directive only dictates general rules and each financial firm makes use of its own questionnaire that is likely to be different from its competitors’. Our analysis focuses on the differences that characterize the MiFID questionnaire across financial firms with both a descriptive approach and an empirical approach. In the descriptive approach, we examine the content of 14 Italian questionnaires in order to highlight the main divergences and similarities in the contents of the questionnaires. The business model of the financial firm but also the competence of the front-office employees and the conduct of the compliance function are possible explanations for the different structure of the questionnaires. In the empirical approach, we investigate how reliable MiFID questionnaires are, in terms of the consistency of profiles that come out when they are filled up by the same person. In brief, three different questionnaires are sent to 100 potential investors (who are requested to fill all of them up) to verify the consistency of the profiles that are obtained. Our results show that, depending on the questionnaire that is used, at least for some subjects, the profiles obtained by the same person across the three financial firms vary. This is likely to derive from the differences in the contents and scoring methods of the three questionnaires as highlighted in the descriptive analysis. As a consequence, a dilemma about the opportunity of imposing a single suitability questionnaire to all intermediaries arises as it is discussed in the conclusions.

Two Faces of the Satisfaction Mirror: A Study of Work Environment, Job Satisfaction, and Customer Satisfaction in Dutch Municipalities

During the past three decades, the performance of public organizations has become more and more of an issue. However, academic research on public administration pays relatively little attention to how organizational performance is related to work environment and human resources within organizations. In this research, work environment characteristics, job satisfaction, and customer satisfaction are studied by comparing customer satisfaction data with data on the well-being of front-office employees in 35 Dutch municipalities. The authors test their hypotheses using structural equation modeling. Contrary to what was expected, the findings indicate that the effect of job satisfaction on customer satisfaction is twofold. In organizations in which employees are more satisfied with their jobs, customers are more satisfied with the empathy of the employees, but the waiting times for services tend to increase concomitantly. In addition, findings indicate that the work environment characteristics influence job satisfaction. These results have some implications for human resource management (HRM).

Banking services in Portugal: a preliminary analysis to the perception and expectations of front office employees

The banking sector offers high rates of employment in Portugal. This study aims to determine the degree of satisfaction and career expectations of bank branch employees in the Portuguese region of Santarem to inform graduated students who search for job opportunities and professional careers in the banking sector. It should be highlighted that the region of Santarem has been selected based on reasons of convenience. In terms of empirical results, a questionnaire has been developed and it should be mentioned that the degree of satisfaction has been considered as high, i.e. despite the effects of several variables, such as the strategic impact of information and communication technologies, bank branch employees revealed themselves to be optimistic about their future and generally satisfied with their job positions.

Situational construction of Dutch–Indian cultural differences in global IT projects

Cross-cultural cooperation of employees in geographically-distributed project teams has become an important topic in global IT projects. Traditional functionalistic and instrumental approaches in project management literature show the relevance of cross-cultural cooperation for project success, but they give insufficient insight into its daily practices. Based upon a study of cross-cultural cooperation between Dutch front office and Indian back office employees in four Multinational IT Service Providers – IBM, Accenture, Atos Origin and Philips – this paper suggests the constructed nature of cultural differences. The research demonstrated that Dutch front and Indian back office employees emphasized or denied, enlarged and bridged cultural differences to legitimise and/or de-legitimise asymmetric power relations in the projects. Front and back offices struggled over project control, client contact, and high-end jobs. In focusing on such a power-sensitive understanding of cultural differences, this paper contributes to the debate on managing global projects by illustrating that cultural differences are not completely fixed and static but can be constructed and used as a strategic source to gain specific goals connected to specific power constellations in a global project setting.

Nostalgia-Related Aspects of Professional Sport Facilities: A Facility Audit of Major League Baseball and National Football League Strategies to Evoke the Past

This paper focused on documenting how Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Football League (NFL) utilize nostalgia through their sport facilities to showcase the past, present and even the future. This study involved the collection and examination of several facility elements through a facility audit. Data was collected on nostalgia inducing elements by using facility and renovation documents/blueprints and announcements, archived data, published websites, facility visits, and interaction/contact with front office employees. The collected information led the researchers to determine that MLB and NFL teams use specific strategies or tactics within their facilities to create or evoke nostalgia. Furthermore, there are opportunities for each organization to attract more live and remote spectators to their venue and organizational-sponsored events in order to establish or maintain membership in their fan nation through methods which center on enhancing the nostalgic experience.

Job Esteem Assessment of Front Office Employees of the Hospitality Industry

Job-esteem is defined, as the level of respect and dignity an individual believes is associated with his/her job. A possible phenomenon hindering the success of the hospitality industry as it is the negative perception many service employees have of their jobs (Ghiselli,La Lopa,& Bai,2001). Many front line service employees often feel their work is insulting, demeaning and humiliating as they cater to the needs and sometimes demanding wants of customers. Hospitality industry employees are especially vulnerable to these feelings due to the nature of the services provided. Experts believed that this perception could cause poor service delivery, dislike for the guest, negative job attitude and high tumover rates. If employees do not take pride in their jobs or find dignity in what they do, they are more likely to leave the industry. Perhaps a greater concern occurs when employees with negative attitudes towards their jobs do not leave the industry but stay and provide the service. In this study the job esteem of the front office employees of the A- class hotels of Jammu region has been found through a structured instrument containing components of job esteem which is job specific esteem (i.e. Hospitality esteem, in this study), self esteem, Job satisfaction, job related anomie and work ethic. Job esteem is a dynamic phenomenon, which is interrelated to employee performance and the study makes suggestion, for the improvement of the performance of employees through interventions focused on the improvements related to the components of job esteem.

Motivating Hotel Employees

To learn what hotel employees want out of their jobs, the authors asked 278 workers at 12 hotels in the U.S. and Canada to rank the following ten work factors: good wages, tactful discipline, job security, interesting work, feeling of being "in on things," sympathetic help with personal problems, opportunities for advancement and development, good working conditions, personal loyalty to employees, and appreciation for work accomplishments. Overall, hotel employees reported that the three things they most wanted from their employers were: (1) good wages, (2) job security, and (3) opportunities for advancement and development. There were differences among the hotel workers, however, based on their age and the area in which they worked. While all respondents ranked good wages as the single most important job factor, younger employees reported opportunities for development and interesting work as the second and third most-wanted job factors. In contrast, employees over 30 reported job security and working conditions as the second and third most-important job factors. The top-three job factors for F&B servers were good wages, developmental opportunities, and job security. Front-office employees gave similar emphasis to wages and opportunity, but placed appreciation in the third spot, followed by job security. Human-resources, accounting, and sales and marketing employees tended to emphasize interesting work and opportunities for advancement more than the other groups.

An Evaluation of Service Complexity Measures of Front Office Employees in the Hotel/Motel Industry

Two hundred and twelve hotel/motel front office employees were surveyed in order to determine the relationship between sixteen service complexity constructs and employee attitudinal reactions to their job. The results of the study indicate that in addition to the generally accepted complexity measures, there are other measures available to evaluate job complexity of the customer contact employee.