Referring to an employee as “the face” of an organization suggests that an individual worker’s actions may transmit information about the kind of organization they represent. Mascots in a baseball stadium make that metaphor material by wearing an organizationally prescribed mask and performing in the name of the organization (Keller & Richey, 2006; MacNeill, 2009). This study investigated how one baseball mascot, Spike of the Round Rock Express, embodied his team’s identity through the activation of organizational routines by analyzing video recordings, autoethnographic field notes, and stories (Heath & Luff, 2013). Recognizing the highly symbolic work of a mascot work has implications for the performer, audience members, and organizations who rely on mascots to enhance the stadium experience. Additionally, this research provides suggestions for future mascot performers on how they might come to “know your role and play it to the hilt” (Devantier & Turkington, 2006). Organizational routines combine three recursive dimensions: the ostensive, understandings an employee brings to his or her work, the performative, actions an employee takes while doing his or her work, and the artifactual, material objects an employee uses or creates in order to facilitate work tasks (Feldman & Pentland, 2003). This research begins with an exploration of how I developed occupational and organizational role expectations. In order to know my role, I had to learn Spike’s identity: what he must do, may do, and can do (Strauss, 1959; Enfield, 2011). I specifically recognize the ways I came to understand my role as someone who embodies the mission of the organization through the preparation of artifacts for performance and protection of the audience for whom I am performing. The performative dimension is explored by identifying instances when my performance challenged established understandings of Spike’s identity, specifically in instances where I was unprepared for a scenario or chose to protect one group’s interest over another’s. In these unanticipated moments, I often found myself turning other participants in the stadium event, like fans and coworkers, into co-performers and relied on their improvisational offerings to inform my ongoing performance (Eisenberg, 1990; Meyer, Frost, & Weick, 1998). / text

Magister Commercii - MCom (Business and Finance) / This master's thesis report is a record of my action research study conducted at a traditional bank in South Africa. The report follows a narrative writing style. It contains my personal learnings and reflections. In it I record my practices aimed at promoting Islamic banking products of a traditional bank. In undertaking this action research, I employed interventions whereby I improved my own learning and behaviour through practice. This action research took place within the customer facing division of a national traditional bank in the Western Cape. While conducting my situational analysis, I found that front-line employees lacked knowledge and awareness about Islamic banking products, which negatively impacted their attitude and willingness to promote the Islamic banking offering. As the action research progressed, another concern was identified, namely, the lack of awareness of Islamic banking by customers. In order to guide activities that are directed at improving the behaviour of front-line employees and customers, I drew insights from the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) by Icek Ajzen (1991) for my theoretical framework. Observations, interviews and interview schedules were used to collect data and continuously analysed using content analysis and univariate analysis for the respective data types. Evidence was generated by measuring the data against a standard of judgments as required for an action research project. This resulted in the identification of key factors that influence front-line employees' willingness to promote the Islamic banking products. These factors were their attitudes and perceived behavioural control. It was further identified that the lack of awareness by customers had a negative impact on their attitudes towards using the Islamic banking offering. Both issues were addressed, by following the cyclical approach of action research. In order to influence front-line employees' behaviour, with the support of the necessary stakeholders, I implemented internal marketing programmes such as training and development. To increase the level of customer awareness, I implemented activities directed at external customers such as brochures and poster displays within branches. The study finds that through my ethical and political practices, front-line employees were motivated and stakeholders actively participated in planning and executing interventions designed to improve the performance of Islamic banking sales. The practices implemented by myself, as an Islamic banking product champion, were identified as a key influence in the promotion of Islamic banking. I also identified that senior management and middle management influenced front-line employees' acceptance and implementation of internal marketing practices.

The service economy is flourishing and due to high competition, manufacturers are turning to service innovation as way to distinguish and meet their customers increasing and changing demands. Service design and an increased utilization of employees are seen as way of improving the innovative capabilities. The aim of this thesis is to explore in a manufacturing company undergoing servitization, what is the role of front-line-employees (FLE) for service innovation and in what ways can front-line-employees be leveraged to enhance a firm’s service innovation capability? To do so, a hermeneutical research approach was adopted to interpret both FLEs collective customer understanding and the strategic view from management and service design within a company. Results reveal an encountered complexity and unstructured development of customer knowledge through long ongoing relations where the continuous identification of customer needs is a unformalized process and FLEs are relying on experience and tacit knowledge to do so. The study identifies FLEs as a resource to innovation, with aggregated customer knowledge, product knowledge and practice knowledge and are mainly contributing as a supporting actor in the innovation process. The study makes a contribution by emphasizing the needed support to empower FLEs as contributors to service innovation. Service design tools and techniques are a suggested way to provide structure and formalization in the involvement of FLEs into the innovation process. Future studies should aim to validate and explore the suggestions further through a comprehensive study of the inter-organizational customer knowledge creation and dissemination and its effect on service innovation.

Problem definition: In service organizations, front-line employees are considered to be the primary element when providing the organization’s services as they interact directly with customers and influence their perception of service quality. In other words, if the front-line employees are satisfied they will deliver the organization’s services in the best way which will directly lead to customer satisfaction. So it is worth studying how the service organizations use internal marketing tools towards their front-line employees in order to achieve their satisfaction.     Purpose of the Research: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the human resources practices aimed at front-line employee’s satisfaction that is related to internal marketing at SEB and to show how using the various methods implemented by SEB has took the organization to the position as of now.   Research Questions: How the Internal marketing elements are practiced by human resources at SEB bank in order to achieve front-line employee´s satisfaction?   Methods: In order to fulfil the purpose of dissertation the primary and secondary data has been analyzed based on the theoretical concepts. The theoretical concepts are based on academic data from books and scientific articles. The empirical data consists of both primary and secondary data. The primary data has been collected by conducting two interviews, one with the manager from human resource department at SEB and another with a front-line employee. The secondary data were collected from SEB’s webpage.    Conclusion: This study explores the potential effect the organization can have on the services due to the workings of the front-line employees. It can be concluded from the theoretical and empirical analysis that SEB’s management sees internal marketing practices (such as empowering, motivations and rewarding, job security and training) as a fundamental approaches to achieve their front-line employee’s satisfaction. SEB considers its employees as the most vital asset that can create and achieve its customer’s satisfaction, which has led to its immense growth.

The number of service-oriented jobs has increased locally and nationally, and organizations are spending millions of dollars to train front-line employees to maintain customer satisfaction and compete in the service industry. Despite the financial investments of these training programs, little research has investigated the holistic effectiveness of customer-focused training (CFT) programs. Researchers found positive relationships between the constructs under investigation and reported that when CFT programs are delivered on a consistent basis with leadership support, they help build a service-oriented culture. The purpose of this case study was to investigate employee perceptions of CFT and relationships between performance, engagement, and building a service-oriented culture, where the questions were designed to address front-line employees in the transit system of Southeastern Pennsylvania. The conceptual framework for this study was by Service Quality, where the concepts for the framework support organizational culture and social exchange. The total number of participants was 36 with 27 for interviews and 9 for a focus group. The participants were selected using a purposeful sampling approach. The data were analyzed by coding for categories, themes, and patterns to reflect in-depth understanding and reporting of CFT among front-line employees. The participants felt that CFT programs were beneficial for them and could help improve customer service. Given these findings, similarly-situated employees may view training in a positive light and may be willing to engage in more training to improve customer service. Human resource personnel may be encouraged from the positive results of this study to develop and implement more training, which may help employees and leaders build a credible service-oriented culture.