Employee and Customer Perceptions of Service Quality in an Indian Firm

Nous présentons un modèle complétant les conceptions existantes de la relation entre employés et clients dans la domaine des services qui propose que la perception de l’efficacité du service par l’agent comme prédictive de l’efficacité du service perçue par le client. L’efficacité du service se réfère à la perception qu’ont les agents de répondre ou même d’aller au‐delà des attentes relatives au service de la part de l’organisation et des clients exteriors. Nous avons enquêté la relation entre l’efficacité du service, la maturité de l’équipe, et la qualité du service dans la filiale indienne d’une organisation internationale de produits de bureaux. Les agents de service appartenant à 18 équipes autonomes ont classé leur propre efficacitéà répondre aux attentes de la direction et des clients extérieurs. Les donées préexistantes sur la maturité de ces équipes étaient recueillies auprès l’organisation. 114 clients de la même société, choisi au hazard, évaluaient la qualité du service fourni, leur satisfaction de ce service et les effets attendus par le client. Nous avons trouvé des liaisons positives entre l’efficacité du service, la maturité du groupe et la qualité de service. Ces resultants servent à enrichir la littérature reliant les comportements des employés aux effets sur les clients pour les sociétés operant dans les economies émergeantes. We proposed a model complementing existing conceptions of the relationship between service employees and their customers, that proposes service effectiveness as an employee‐level predictor of customer‐perceived service quality. Service effectiveness refers to employees’ perceptions of meeting or even exceeding the service‐related expectations of the organisation and external customers. We investigated the relationship between service effectiveness, team maturity, and service quality in an Indian branch of an international office products organisation. Service employees belonging to 18 self‐managed teams rated their own effectiveness in meeting the expectations of management and external customers. Pre‐existing team maturity data for these teams were obtained from the organisation. Simultaneously, 114 randomly selected customers of the same company evaluated the quality of service provided, their satisfaction with the service, and intended customer outcomes. We found positive links between service effectiveness, group maturity, and service quality. These results also help extend the literature linking employee behaviors with customer outcomes to companies operating in emerging economies.     

Robert Waska: The Total Transference and The Complete Counter-Transference: The Kleinian Psychoanalytic Approach with More Disturbed Patients

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Zooming into daily life: within-person associations between physical activity and affect in young adults

Objective: Negative affect in daily life is linked to poorer mental and physical health. Activity could serve as an effective, low-cost intervention to improve affect. However, few prior studies have assessed physical activity and affect in everyday life, limiting the ecological validity of prior findings. This study investigates whether daily activity is associated with negative and positive evening affect in young adults.

Design: Young adults (N = 189, Mdn = 23.00) participated in an intensive longitudinal study over 10 consecutive days.

Main Outcome Measures: Participants wore accelerometers to objectively assess moderate-to-vigorous physical activity continuously throughout the day and reported their affect in time-stamped online evening diaries before going to sleep.

Results: On days when participants engaged in more activity than usual, they reported not only less depressed and angry evening affect but also more vigour and serenity in the evening.

Conclusion: Young adults showed both less negative and more positive affect on days with more activity. Physical activity is a promising health promotion strategy for physical and mental well-being.     

Social distance and trait attribution among four Southeast Asian ethnic groups in the United States

This study explored social distance and trait attribution and the relationship between the two variables in persons of four Southeast Asian ethnic groups. 100 Cambodians, 102 Hmong, 102 Laotians, and 101 Vietnamese in the United States were administered a modified Bogardus Social Distance Scale with respect to seven different ethnic groups (the other three Southeast Asian groups, African American, Hispanic, and White), and rated these other groups on 10 traits: friendly and likable, in good health, unattractive, law abiding, hardworking, loyal, peaceful, unfair and dishonest, unintelligent, and have good morals. Cambodians expressed willingness to have the closest social distance with Whites and Laotians and their trait attributions were more favorable for these two groups. Theoretical and practical implications were suggested.     

Elia Kazan’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">America America</Emphasis>: A Message for America

Elia Kazan’s 1963 film, America America is a tribute to the immigrant experience of his own forebears, and has relevance to the refugee crisis of today. In stark black and white cinematography, the film provides insight into the refugee-immigrant experience, personified in Stavros, a young man longing for freedom, obsessed with an idealized America. His hope and innocence cannot safeguard him. His memories of his happy childhood and loving family create idealizing transferences to a world of others who manipulate and betray him as he undertakes his quest. Eventually he too learns to manipulate and betray, unconsciously identifying with the aggressor. History will offer ethical challenges, the black and white cinematography mirroring the black and white perception of good and bad, the shades of grey evoking a maturation of understanding.     

Ethics,Ethos, and Dualities: Self and Culture,Talking in Tongues

Ethical considerations are experienced as a softly murmuring subtext in the analytic situation. The question of ethics and ethos opens the question of self and culture. Living ethically involves awareness of cultural norms as well as personal judgment, and therefore implies a permeable boundary between self and world. Right and wrong, self and society are de facto dualities, rigid splits or means of balance, perpetual conflict or reconciliation. Western culture has been shaped by the duality of the Dionysian and the Apollonian. In this dualistic tension, is there potential for balance between intoxication and logic in contemporary psychoanalysis? Do psychoanalysts share a common ethic? How do we reconcile the Apollonian ethic of honesty (M. Guy Thompson, The Ethic of Honesty, Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York: 2004) with the Dionysian ethic of the creative use of the self in the transference–countertransference matrix? Using clinical examples and the spiritual and ethical considerations of writers such as Rumi, Martin Buber, and Dostoevsky, psychoanalytic thinkers such as Joyce McDougall, and traditional sources such as Zen Buddhism and the Talmud, this essay examines the effect of the cultural biases of the analyst in the analytic situation, and the hidden ethical dilemmas we face. Is it possible to maintain a “purity of intention” as we maintain respect for the boundaries of the analysand while exploring and utilizing deep countertransferential responses?     

Personality terms of abuse in three cultures: type nouns between description and insult

In this study terms of abuse are investigated in three different cultures. Spontaneous verbal aggression is to a certain extent reminiscent of the values of a certain culture. One hundred and ninety‐two male subjects from Spain, Germany and the Netherlands were asked to write down terms of abuse that they would use given a certain stimulus situation, and in addition to give their rating of the offensive character of those terms. A total set of 830 useful expressions was thus collected. The frequencies of the expressions were established, and the total list of expressions was categorized in terms of what they were about. In Spanish abusive language is typically about family and relations, in Germany it is typically about anal aspects, and in the Netherlands it is mainly about genitals. Explanations are provided in terms of dimensions on which the three cultures differ. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Vehicle Drivers and Fatal Accidents

ABSTRACT: This study attempts an exploratory study of the question, What happens to drivers of vehicles involved in accidents in which there is a fatality, whether or not the driver was at fault? The purpose of the investigation was to attempt to determine what, if any, crisis intervention is needed for such drivers. A total of 33 drivers participated who were involved in such an accident from 6 months to 11 years prior to the interviews. Major findings are (1) the range of time for drivers to resolve their crises seemed to be from a few hours to years after the accident, (2) the crises created many psychosocial and physical problems for these drivers, (3) the support of family, friends, and significant others was the most important variable for the drivers in crisis resolution, (4) condemnation hindered them most.     

Honeymoon,medical treatment or big business? An analysis of the meanings of the term “reproductive tourism” in German and Israeli public media discourses

Background/Introduction

Infertile couples that travel to another country for reproductive treatment do not refer to themselves as “reproductive tourists”. They might even be offended by this term. “Tourism” is a metaphor with hidden connotations. We will analyze these connotations in public media discourses on “reproductive tourism” in Israel and Germany. We chose to focus on these two countries since legal, ethical and religious restrictions give couples a similar motivation to travel for reproductive care, while the cultural backgrounds and conceptions of reproduction are different.

Results

Our research shows that the use of the metaphor “reproductive treatment” and its hidden messages depends on the writers’ intention and the target population. Although the phenomenon of patients travelling for reproductive treatment can fit into the definitions of tourism, the term emphasizes aspects that do not reflect patients’ reality. In both the German and the Israeli public media debate the term “reproductive tourism” is either used to criticize the economic aspects of the phenomenon or to attract patients as potential clients.

Conclusions

Ethicists should be cautious when borrowing metaphors like “reproductive tourism” from the public debate. Our findings support Penning’s suggestion to use instead an unloaded term like cross-border reproductive care to describe the phenomenon in a more neutral way and to make it explicit whenever criticism is necessary.