Service-based Industries Research Articles

Malaysia Meets (and Remains in) the Middle-Income Trap: Lost Coalition amidst Industrial Value Migration

Once an aspiring nation on the path towards achieving high-income status, Malaysia’s efforts to break its vicious cycle of low productivity-cum-low wage were hindered by ineffective attempts to form an upgrading coalition. The coalition not only failed to make material progress in addressing industrial needs, but also faced an increasingly isolationist international trade and investment climate where transnational corporations were encouraged to reshore/friendshore productive activities back to their home/like-minded economies. This paper analysed three structural reasons miring the nation in the middle-income trap. Firstly, the Malaysian economy was struggling to establish its competitive niche. This occurred as Malaysia grew increasingly reliant on extractive and service-based industries, while its labour-intensive activities struggled in adapting to the demands of Industry 4.0. Secondly, there was insufficient interest in promoting indigenous technologies and championing industrial upgrading. The statebusiness coalition primarily focused on highly regulated, non-tradable industries such as utility provision, banking and real estate. Finally, we observed a skills mismatch between the push for science and technology education and the labour market’s demand for general, undifferentiated skills to support low value-added operations. Unless these interrelated challenges are effectively addressed, the nation will likely experience frustration in breaking through the impasse.

Feeling Supported as a Remote Worker: The Role of Support from Leaders and Colleagues and Job Satisfaction in Promoting Employees' Work-Life Balance.

Due to the increasing use of remote work, understanding the dynamics of employee support and its implications for job satisfaction and work-life balance is crucial. Utilizing the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory as a theoretical framework, this research investigated how feeling supported by leaders and colleagues at work fosters work-life balance and job satisfaction among remote employees. The study involved 635 remote workers (females = 61%, mean age, 46.7, SD = 11) from various service-based industries and public administration in Italy. Results from the structural equation model showed a total mediating effect of job satisfaction in the link between colleague support and work-life balance (χ2(22) = 68.923, p = 0.00, CFI = 0.973, TLI = 0.955, RMSEA = 0.059 (90% CI = 0.044-0.075, p = 0.158), SRMR = 0.030), emphasizing the role of interpersonal relationships within the workplace in enhancing remote workers' job satisfaction and, consequently, their work-life balance. Contrary to expectations, the study found no significant direct or indirect link between leader support and work-life balance. This research highlights the significance of fostering strong social connections and ensuring employee satisfaction to promote well-being and work-life balance in remote work arrangements.

Factors of Growing Mental Health Issues of Employees at Workplace in Service Based Industries

The multifaceted factors leading to the increasing prevalence of mental health challenges among employees within service-based industries. Amidst the dynamic landscape of modern workplaces, employees face an array of stressors, ranging from demanding workloads and tight deadlines to interpersonal conflicts and job insecurity. The paper delves into the unique stressors inherent to service-based industries, where the pressure to meet client expectations, maintain service quality, and navigate unpredictable customer interactions can significantly impact employee well-being. Furthermore, organizational factors such as inadequate support systems, lack of mental health resources, and stigma surrounding mental health issues exacerbate the problem. Drawing on existing literature and empirical evidence, this abstract aims to shed light on the complex interplay of individual, organizational, and environmental factors contributing to the escalating mental health concerns among employees in service-based industries. Understanding these factors is crucial for developing targeted interventions and fostering a supportive workplace culture conducive to employee mental health and overall well-being.

Re-imagining delightful experiences in “New Normal” conditions: A systematic critical review and future research agenda

Disasters and crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, have created an uncertain and challenging environment, particularly for the hospitality and service-based industries, forcing managers to seek effective approaches in designing and staging delightful experiences in post-crisis conditions. This paper aims to advance research in delightful customer experiences in the hospitality and service-based industries in the post-crisis “new normal” conditions by (1) systematically and critically reviewing non-crisis and pre-pandemic findings on customer delight, (2) updating and structuring new findings in times of crisis and during the pandemic, and (3) thus suggesting new ways of conceptualising customer delight in the “new normal” conditions. Several conceptual gaps are identified based on this systematic critical review, which eventuates the development of a dual-pathway framework in the "new normal" context. Following this, several future research directions and practical implications for more effective delightful experience management are provided.

Service Quality Management: A Literature Reviews

Service quality management (SQM) is a critical aspect of organizational success in service-based industries, as it directly influences customer satisfaction, loyalty, and financial performance. This literature review aims to synthesize existing research on SQM to provide insights into its conceptualization, measurement, determinants, and strategies for improvement. Drawing on a comprehensive review of academic articles, books, and industry reports, this paper examines the evolution of SQM frameworks and models, including seminal models such as SERVQUAL and SERVPERF, and explores the multidimensional nature of service quality. The review identifies key dimensions of service quality, including tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy, and evaluates various measurement and assessment tools used to capture these dimensions. Additionally, the literature review delves into the determinants of service quality, both internal (e.g., organizational culture, employee training) and external (e.g., customer expectations, competitive pressures), highlighting their impact on service quality outcomes. Furthermore, the review discusses best practices and strategies for improving service quality, such as continuous improvement initiatives, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, service recovery mechanisms, and employee empowerment programs. It also examines challenges faced by organizations in managing service quality, such as globalization, technological advancements, and changing customer preferences, and proposes areas for future research to address these challenges. Overall, this literature review contributes to a deeper understanding of SQM by synthesizing existing knowledge, identifying gaps in the literature, and offering practical insights for organizations seeking to enhance service quality and achieve sustainable competitive advantage.

Sustainable Competitive Advantage for Multi-Unit Franchising: From the Taiwanese Franchise Market Perspectives

Franchising is a widely adopted business format in both product-based and service-based industries. Particularly, the concept of multi-unit franchising has become increasingly prominent as a favored expansion strategy for both franchisors and franchisees. To sustain a competitive advantage, it is crucial for franchisees to establish a network of local outlets. This study delves into the strategies employed by multi-unit franchisees in the Taiwanese estate agency sector, using the theory of sustainable competitive advantage as a framework. The research design for this study is qualitative, employing in-depth interviews as the primary method of data collection, with grounded theory used for analysis. The findings reveal that ownership patterns play a crucial role in determining sustainable competitive advantage. Furthermore, the existence of both explorative and exploitative capabilities was identified as the foundation for establishing local leadership and ensuring a sustainable advantage. Importantly, sustainable competitive advantage is achieved through the local leader determinant. As a result, four propositions have been developed, which hold essential practical implications for top managers. Especially in the digital era, information asymmetry is diminishing, and cooperation becomes the key to creating synergies.

Examining proxemic as an instrument for experiential brand design in physical retail spaces

For luxury coffee shops to create positive and memorable brand experiences for their customers, they must carefully design, manage and maintain their brand image throughout the entire consumer journey. The store environment plays a prominent role because it strongly influences customers’ perceptions of the brand. Factors such as the social atmosphere and employee interactions contribute to defining and representing the brand identity to customers. Therefore, coffee shops must consider customers’ cultural identities to ensure their experiences are relevant to the sociocultural context. By integrating design, branding, anthropometry and proxemics, decision-makers can create personalized experiences that engage customers on physical, emotional, cognitive and cultural levels. This research focuses on using proxemics to design luxury coffee shop experiences in multicultural spaces. We propose an instrument to collect data on task patterns, task distinctions and user preferences in coffee shops. The tool consists of three sections that collect data on proxemic behaviour, proxemic perceptions (cultural) and proxemic reflections. We used a case study to exhibit the relevance of proxemics and proxemic behaviour in improving the interaction between person, object and space. The instrument offers the possibility to document proxemic factors that are imperceptible and intangible in the users’ brand experience and journey in a retail space. It also provides data to increase user engagement with different touchpoints, such as retail space, product design and identity design. Proxemic behaviour is relevant in addressing cultural, behavioural and sociological aspects of interpersonal situations related to spatial distance between individuals. These findings suggest the relevance of proxemics in promoting human-centred design in experiential spaces. Ultimately, the work aims to expand the available instruments and methods for improving user experiences in service-based industries within the experience economy.

WILL BRANDING ENGAGE PERPETUAL BONDING IN HEALTHCARE?

A brand is the promise of value and is imperative in all aspects of the industry. Retaining existing customers and attracting new customers has always been the challenge faced by service-based industries, which include private healthcare, primarily in hospitals. As a niche sector, private hospitals' tasks address demanding customer expectations. Based on the past reviews of the literature, this study proposes a few aspects to be investigated in the context of private hospitals in Malaysia. Data was collected and distributed using an online survey. The model was validated using Smart PLS (version 3.3.2) software and SPSS for data analysis. The sampling technique used was non-probability. The analysis revealed that brand trust significantly correlates with customer brand engagement which subsequently influences brand equity in private hospitals and is moderated by service quality for critical incidence. These findings give insight to policymakers, the healthcare industry, mainly private hospitals and academic fields to discover the influences to contemplate in this sector and remain competitive strategically.

Learning to Adapt and improve Performance: Role of Team member Positive Mood and Satisfaction

In this paper, we explore how organizations in service-based industries can learn and adapt to market disruptions. We propose that the relationship between team exploratory learning and team performance depends on the mediating role of adaptive capability and the moderating role of team members' positive mood satisfaction. As a part of the study, we conducted a cross-sectional survey at the team level in an Information Technology services organization. We collected data from both project managers and team members working in project teams within the organization and used PROCESS macro developed by Hayes for testing mediation and moderated-mediation models. Our findings establish that a team's adaptive capability mediates the relationship between team exploratory learning and team performance, and the relationship between team exploratory learning and team adaptive capability is moderated by team member positive mood. Finally, team member satisfaction moderates the relationship between team adaptive capability and team performance. Our study adds to the theory by establishing that team adaptive capability in service organizations intervenes in the effect of team exploratory learning on team performance. In addition, we establish a crucial role of team members' positive moods and satisfaction levels in this relationship.

Gig Economy Teaching: On the Importance and Dangers of Self-branding in Online Markets

Abstract The gig economy is rapidly transforming service-based industries, including online teaching. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of people worldwide to work remotely, gig economy teaching generated billions of dollars in revenue and was responsible for millions of lessons per month. Although the global labor market is currently experiencing a major shift because of the gig economy, applied linguists have paid little attention to gig-based work and its implications. The current study narrows this research gap by using self-branding theories to understand the ways in which gig economy teachers market themselves to potential students. The findings, which are based on 100 teacher profiles, reveal that teachers adopt four self-branding discourses when marketing their teaching services. These self-branding discourses may vary according to the teacher’s country of origin, professional qualifications, and first language background. The study argues that self-branding discourses reflect a larger, and perhaps more problematic, global trend in which individual workers directly compete against each other in a race to lower earnings and job security.

Analysis of Challenges for One Point Solution Study of Electric Vehicle Service Centre (EVSC) using Fuzzy– Methodology

ABSTRACT It is not very unrealistic to lookout for one-point solutions in the case of service-based industries. Similarly, there is a need of establishing Electric Vehicle Service Centres (EVSC), which could be one-point solution to the customers. These modern service stations are converged towards promoting the idea of sustainability in the environment. This would provide the services solely for Electric Vehicles (EVs), an emerging application of sustainable resources. However, considering a range of services from charging infrastructure to the battery swapping module in a single EVSC, some numerous challenges and risk factors get invoked. For EVSCs too, it is thus essential to analyze every risk factor associated with its practicability. In this work, authors have identified thirteen challenges posed by this industry by consulting experts from the same genre, and thus a model is developed deploying Fuzzy to arrange these challenges in a hierarchy level posed by each criterion. The results are exclusively expected to benefit the policymakers of the EVSC industry to help them plan their businesses on the intensity of challenges they face from each factor. It shall further aid in designing more efficient and robust frameworks to ensure a better servicing mechanism for EVSCs targeting one-point solution schemes.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Sustainable Business Models in SMEs

Businesses have been exposed to various challenges during the global pandemic, and their response to this disruption has impacted their resilience as well as their chances to overcome this crisis. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are changing their business models in order to adapt to this changing environment. Service-based industries have been hit particularly hard. This research investigates how SMEs operating in service industries have been coping with the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This research aims to gain insights into which transformation drivers they have focused on and which technologies they have selected as a means to respond to the disruption. These insights regarding SMEs are then explored according to their influence on the redefinition of sustainable business models in SMEs. The review data was analyzed via a customized research framework that contains three dimensions and 30 subconcepts. The results show the distribution of drivers and technologies across service sectors. They are organized into a Business Model Canvas and could be considered useful for academia and practitioners. The highly unpredictable environment allows for only a few feasible strategic approaches regarding an SME’s decision on to follow incumbents, to become a challenger, or to reinvent themselves based on their own transformation drivers and readiness to apply digital technologies.

Debt Expansion as “Relief and Rescue” at the Time of the Covid-19 Pandemic: Insights from the Legal Theory of Finance

Debt Expansion as "Relief and Rescue" at the Time of the Covid-19 Pandemic:Insights from the Legal Theory of Finance Iris H-Y Chiu (bio), Andreas Kokkinis (bio), and Andrea Miglionico (bio) I. Introduction The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a public health crisis of widespread contagion. As such, lockdowns have been imposed in many countries to limit face-to-face social interaction, thereby severely impacting economic activity and workplaces.1 The United Kingdom (UK) was "locked down" between March 23 and July 4, 2020, which resulted in the freezing of business activity for many sectors, such as brick-and-mortar retail (except groceries and pharmacies), travel and leisure, restaurants, public services, and service-based industries affected by social distancing such as transport, work-sharing facilities, leisure, hospitality, etc. Although many sectors have reopened since early July, the risks to public health have not subsided and emergency local lockdowns are being reimposed.2 It is estimated that economic output has been reduced in the UK by at least 20% compared to the [End Page 29] same period last year.3 Gross domestic product was reduced by 9.5% in the United States (US) in the second quarter of 2020.4 The financial implications of economic lockdown in so many sectors were immediate, as the corporate sector is heavily financialized.5 The freezing of business activity in hard-hit sectors has implications for their cash flow, servicing of debt, solvency, and market-valuation and credit-rating assessments. The economic woes for corporations inevitably affect households as redundancies have been gradually announced6 and wider macroeconomic uncertainties affect household income and welfare.7 Besides public finance packages for emergency help, such as furloughing8 and paycheck protection,9 policy makers have turned to private-sector finance to alleviate the financial stress and hardships caused to households and corporations during the pandemic. Private-sector finance is being relied on—to a significant extent, but not [End Page 30] exclusively—to meet the policy goals of "relief" and "rescue." "Relief" refers to the policy goal of giving corporations and households temporary release from the pressures of debt which would be exacerbated in the weak economic conditions during the pandemic. "Rescue" refers to the policy of facilitating the access of corporations to finance to keep them afloat in relation to expenses, losses, and shoring up capital for the future. The upshot of relief and rescue policies is that debt expansion, or the carrying of increased debt burdens for corporations and households, has been adopted as a key policy response to the financial woes of corporations and households during the pandemic. These policies are not dissimilar to those undertaken in many countries.10 The legal implementation of relief and rescue policies in the US, UK, and European Union (EU) involves legal and regulatory suspensions to facilitate a level of debt expansion that would normally have been limited by the operation of microprudential regulation for lenders and contractual constraints in debt arrangements. Further, the legalization of extraordinary fiscal and monetary policies has been carried out. This episode reflects how law and regulation have been made elastic in order to address crisis management and social needs.11 Reis and Vasconcelos argue that such elasticity is institutionally supported based on the expected macroeconomic behavior of agents in markets.12 Empirical evidence also offers support for the ex post efficiency and welfare effects of certain suspensions, particularly in private law agreements such as debt moratoria.13 Carruthers characterizes contractual suspensions as "financial decommodification," which is necessary when markets are temporarily dysfunctional.14 We situate the policies for relief and rescue within the theorization of legal elasticity in Pistor's legal theory of finance.15 This theorization, [End Page 31] drawn largely from observations during the global financial crisis of 2007-09,16 offers a path for structural reforms in law and regulation as part of post-crisis management.17 In particular, such theorization allows us to critically query the alleged temporary nature of the legal and regulatory suspensions during the pandemic. The theoretical insight drawn is that legal elasticity is often more structural in nature and will have to continue to apply to mitigate...

COVID-19 and International Diversification: A New Paradigm for Multinationals

COVID-19 has challenged longstanding assumptions about multinationals’ international diversification strategies. Unlike corruption or war, this new type of uncertainty is unavoidable. All countries are affected. And, throughout the pandemic, having a global workforce has created additional challenges related to managing diverse policies, resources, and cultures. Going forward, executives of multinationals will first and foremost consider business continuity when selecting investment locations. Multinationals, especially those in service-based industries, likely will scale down their global operations and focus on countries with infrastructures that support remote work and sustaining healthy populations. Key insights come from an executive who managed his firm’s COVID-19 response.

A Decentralized Service based E-commerce

The decentralization of many processes has the potential to help many service-based industries to scale up the operations in magnitude and efficiency horizontally, as well as to reduce exponential overhead costs of operation set-up in a new location though e-commerce. This is achieved through the backbone of connecting different operational units through the internet, more specifically through the cloud. The technologies like cloud computing, block chain, native applications for mobiles, and web applications as well, enable a decentralized yet synchronized environment, which is sustainable with a larger ceiling of overburden on the sector. The e-commerce will use web application, android as well as iOS applications, cloud computing as well as security through block chain techniques. It also makes it easier to adjust according to the customer feedback using collaborative filtering as well as adjusting for errors in remote operational units. For the purpose of understanding, we will take the example of a decentralized, cross city e-commerce laundry service in this paper.

Artificial Intelligence In Legal Services: State-of-Art And Users’ Expectations In Russia

Artificial intelligence is having a transformative effect on the business world. Among others, legal services industry is susceptible to these transformations, but being a part of the legal system, it adopts novelties more slowly than other service-based industries. The issue of AI acceptance for legal services is widely discussed in Russia. The opportunities and threats of AI implementation are the subjects of academic research, business enquires, experts' assessments, and professional community discussions. Still, all those pieces of evidence are biased by the objectives of specific research and methodology used, mostly have no or little empirical data to ground conclusions on. The absence of empirical evidence on the state-of-the-art of AI in legal services and users’ expectations on AI implementation hinders further research in various topics – from legal firms’ management and legal innovations to the lawyering process and access to justice. This paper confirms expert opinions regarding AI technologies and their implementations for legal services, suggesting the cooperation of lawyer and AI in legal service rendering rather than competition. Russian lawyers appear to have the experience of using very advanced AI solutions, including those that are unavailable directly on the Russian market. The expectations of lawyers as users of AI technologies could be described as uncertain, which means that further extension of the AI implementation is still a disputable issue.

Traveling Salesman Problem with Hotel Selection: Comparative Study of the Alternative Mathematical Formulations

Tour scheduling has a central importance in logistics in service-based industries. Many logistics and distribution planning problems can be modeled as a variant of the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). One such variation is the TSP with Hotel Selection (TSPHS) in which a salesman needs to visit a group of cities in a way that the cities are visited via a number of trips whose lengths cannot exceed the maximum length a salesman can cover in a day. Each of the trips starts and ends at a hotel. Moreover, the hotel location where the salesperson ends one day has to be the same as the starting hotel for the next day. The TSPHS is one of the node routing problems and has interesting practical applications in real-life. This study constitutes of the comparison of mathematical formulations which are already exist in the literature with the formulations which have new adaptations for sub-tour elimination constraints.

THE TOURISM AND TRAVEL INDUSTRY AND ITS EFFECT ON THE GREAT RECESSION: A MULTILEVEL SURVIVAL ANALYSIS

Does a country with a heavy dependence on a tourism economy have a tendency to succumb to more risk in a recession? With the shift from manufacturing-based economies in the developing world toward service-based industries, including tourism, a reliance on the tourism industry may erode economic stability in tourism-based countries, making them more prone to fall into a recession due to higher risks. In this paper, we wish to emphasise the positive impact of tourism specialisation indices in the international economy on the probability occurrence of a so-called Great Recession. This article uses a multilevel survival analysis and a generalised linear mixed-effect (GLMM) structure modelling to investigate the impact of tourism development on the probability of recession frequency (risk in terms of months of duration and severity), by using data collected from 2007 to 2013 from 71 countries around the world, to see if recession frequency is positively correlated with the various indicators of tourism development. Two GLMMs were fitted to this data: logistic regression and count regression with a Poisson distribution. Results for both regressions show considerable evidence that the ratio between the number of overnight stays and the resident population and travel services as a percentage of commercial service exports positively impacts the probability for a country (from our sample) to experience a recession event and can make recession worse in terms of severity, measured in months.

Lean production and supply chain innovation in baked foods supplier to improve performance

PurposeService industries are currently facing an excess of overproduction that results in extra inventory and waste levels. With the prospect of methods such as lean production, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of lean production methods towards enhanced performance of service-based industries through the study of a local baked foods supplier.Design/methodology/approachThe paper highlights the first stage of research study through current world literature and a critical review as inputs of research findings. The research applies a descriptive research framework within a semi-structured questionnaire survey method which was implemented within three different companies, the baked goods manufacturer, the cafe purchasing the baked foods products and the end users, hence covering the overall supply chain cycle and its entities.FindingsThe research study identified that one of the major challenges facing the baked food company when adopting the lean practices was the lack of commitment from the top management, continuous training, and hence, employee engagement measures were necessary towards performance improvement of the organisation.Originality/valueThe research novelty is to develop an early understanding of lean production practices within the baked goods manufacturer and its upstream and downstream stakeholders. This paper would be considered by the food manufacturer companies in order to require their key suppliers to adopt the most common lean tools identified as Just in Time, Value Steam Mapping and the 5S methods.

KESENIAN & MATA PENCAHARIAN - Upaya Seniman Tradisional & Populer dalam Pemenuhan Nafkah

The traditional and popular artists have their fans, who are associated with levels of society and socio-economic conditions of the artists. Most artists appreciate the arts as a forum for the fulfillment of subsistence and some other artists treat art not merely as the main work in making a living, but as self-actualization and calling in life. Democratization, way of life & lifestyle have encouraged and accelerated development of new traditions in the arts; industrialization that took place since the early 1970s emphasized the political, policy and strategy choices of economy, trade and commercial business and service-based industries, which are very influential on the lives of the type, variety and artistic tastes. Deployment mode of art with industry and trade system applies to the popular performing arts, both departing from the tradition of Java and the growing management and modern technology, which supported the creation and innovation. With such developments, the traditional artists tend to be marginalized and subsistence efforts to meet with arts performances tend to be unprofitable, while popular artists through the art of business and trade industries tend to prosper. This research, among others, find authentic evidence from the field to confirm the truth of these allegations carefully, so that building theory and the concept of "the efforts of traditional and popular artists in the fulfillment of living life" is a field-based, not based on theory and concepts of the social and cultural sciences - called grand theory. In addition to utilizing the resources of media such as newspapers, magazines and internet websites, techniques of field observation and interviews, as well as in-depth interviews, which are commonly used in qualitative research, the mainstay of this research data collection.