Browsing by Author "Tourky, Marwa"

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    Aligning employee and organizational values to build organizational reputation
    (Springer, 2023-04-08) Tourky, Marwa; Osman, Sharina; Harvey, William S.
    Strong organizational reputation is essential, but its relationship with the process of aligning organizational and employee values is not well understood. Our detailed case study of a private hospital demonstrates for the first time how organizational reputation can be enhanced by better alignment between individual and organizational values. We argue that value congruence is a precondition for building a favorable reputation, particularly through the improved service quality that flows from it. Our framework extends the effects of value congruence to reputation and explains how alignment occurs through four key remediation phases: awareness, articulation, acceptance, and action. Our model highlights the dynamic relationship between organizational and individual values, and the complex interplay between value congruence, employee behavior, communication, and reputation. Our study advances theoretical understandings of the link between value congruence and reputation via improved service quality and provides practical insights for organizations both within and beyond the healthcare sector.
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    Chapter 21: the chatbot revolution: companies and consumers in a new digital age
    (Sage, 2022-06-25) Shaalan, Ahmed; Tourky, Marwa; Ibrahim, Khaled
    Chatbots are seen as something of a magic wand for both companies and consumers. They may enable companies to improve customer service and gather vast amounts of accurate data, while giving consumers a better experience as they engage with brands in a customised way. Chatbots can understand everyday language and respond by imitating human-to-human conversations. These anthropomorphic attributes, along with other advances in AI sophistication, have accelerated the commercialisation and prevalence of chatbots. This chapter explores chatbots as a form of evolving technology, provides a comprehensive understanding of their role in digital marketing, and sets out the academic theories associated with their use. It then theorises that machine learning processes are similar to those of humans, before exploring the big data being generated. After discussing the remaining challenges and obstacles to their wider use, conclusions are drawn about the likely future course of e-agents, with the intention of guiding researchers and practitioners into the next generation of AI advances.
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    Conceptualizing corporate identity in a dynamic environment
    (Emerald, 2020-01-30) Tourky, Marwa; Foroudi, Pantea; Gupta, Suraksha; Shaalan, Ahmed
    Purpose This study aims to revisits the meaning of corporate identity (CI) in practice to identify its key dimensions and the interrelationships between them and to provide insights on how to operationalize the construct. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on a comprehensive literature review and qualitative research consisting of 22 semi-structured interviews with senior managers from 11 UK-leading companies, and three in-depth interviews with corporate brand consultants who worked closely with these firms in cognate areas. Findings The study identifies the following six key dimensions of CI in the UK industry: communication, visual identity, behavior, organizational culture, stakeholder management and founder value-based leadership. Research limitations/implications The focus on UK leading companies limits the generalizability of the results. Further studies should be conducted in other sectors and country settings to examine the relationships identified in the current study. Originality/value This study identifies the salient dimensions of CI and, for the first time, the role of founder transformational leadership, employee identification and top management behavioral leadership as key dimensions and sub-dimensions of CI. The study also provides novel insights about the measurements for these dimensions. Additionally, this study introduces a model for the interrelationships between CI dimensions and their influence on corporate image, based on rigorous theoretical underpinnings, which lays the foundation for future empirical testing.
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    De-Linking from Western Epistemologies: using Guanxi-Type relationships to attract and retain hotel guests in the Middle East
    (Cambridge University Press, 2021-07-15) Shaalan, Ahmed; Eid, Riyad; Tourky, Marwa
    Relationships are widely recognized as key to business success in the form of both informal interpersonal networks and formal organizational relationships. While Chinese personal networks (guanxi) have attracted scholars’ interest, the concept has not been fully investigated or understood in other contexts, especially the Middle East, where personal networks fulfill some of the same roles. The underlying socio-cultural formulae of the distinctive cultural dimensions that influence relationship formation in the Middle East also remain under-explored. This research therefore investigates the dimensions of guanxi-type relationships in the Middle East and introduces a new model integrating these relationships into the existing relationship marketing framework, enabling firms to harness personal networks for organizational gain, in turn generating customer satisfaction and retention. Using empirical data from a survey of 637 hotel guests in 17 countries – drawn from a unique target population of guests introduced to Middle Eastern hotels via personal relationships – we show how guanxi-type relationships influence organizational relationships and improve satisfaction and retention. Our significant contributions to theory and practice include extending a holistic understanding of guanxi, enhancing knowledge of its dimensions in the Middle East, and providing managers with clear evidence for a hybrid system of guanxi-type and organizational relationships.
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    Harnessing customer mindset metrics to boost consumer spending: a cross-country study on routes to economic and business growth
    (Wiley, 2022-02-08) Shaalan, Ahmed; Agag, Gomaa; Tourky, Marwa
    The relationship between customer mindset metrics (CMMs) and consumer spending has been extensively investigated at the consumer and firm level, but little is known about it at the national level, nor about how it differs between countries. Drawing on five publicly available datasets gathered in 10 European countries over 20 years, our study traces the connections between three CMMs – customer satisfaction, perceived service quality and loyalty intentions – and consumer spending, as well as examining the moderating cross-country effects of culture, socioeconomic factors, economic structure and political–economic elements. The results show that the CMMs significantly influence consumer spending in all the countries studied, with the effects most pronounced in societies with relatively low education levels, a dominant service sector, fewer barriers to business and international trade and a foundation of survival values rather than self-expressive values. Our findings suggest that CMMs can be used to boost not just business performance but also economic growth, and therefore have significant implications for policymakers as well as practitioners and companies.
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    The hidden costs of negative workplace gossip: its effect on targets’ behaviors, the mediating role of guanxi closeness, and the moderating effect of need for affiliation
    (Springer, 2022-01-06) Cheng, Bao; Peng, Yan; Shaalan, Ahmed; Tourky, Marwa
    This research explores the harmful effects of negative workplace gossip (NWG) on targets and organizations, including its impacts on helping behavior and knowledge hiding. The mediating role of guanxi closeness and the moderating role of need for affiliation are also examined. The study, based on conservation of resources theory, collected data from 526 employees in the hospitality industry in China, using a three-wave survey design. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was employed to test the hypotheses. The empirical results showed that NWG was a strong predictor of reduced helping behavior and increased knowledge hiding; and that guanxi closeness mediated both the negative relationship between NWG and helping behavior, and the positive relationship between NWG and knowledge hiding. Additionally, need for affiliation was shown to act as a moderator between NWG and guanxi closeness: high need for affiliation amplified the negative impact of NWG on guanxi closeness, and then further affected employees’ helping behavior and knowledge hiding. This study therefore offers an important new perspective for interpreting the detrimental effects of negative gossip in organizations, providing not just theoretical advances but practical ways in which managers can proactively reduce these impacts.
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    Negative workplace gossip and targets’ subjective well-being: a moderated mediation model
    (Taylor and Francis, 2022-01-25) Cheng, Bao; Peng, Yan; Zhou, Xing; Shaalan, Ahmed; Tourky, Marwa; Dong, Yun
    Negative gossip is an everyday part of life and work whose outcomes have been the focus of a growing number of studies. However, the impact of negative workplace gossip on employees’ subjective well-being (SWB) appears to have received no attention in the literature. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we use time-lagged data from 243 employees in five firms in China to investigate the processes underlying the links between negative workplace gossip and SWB. Our findings show that negative workplace gossip has a significant negative effect on SWB, and that psychological distress mediates this relationship. We also find that emotional intelligence plays a moderating role between negative workplace gossip and targets’ psychological distress. Our results indicate for the first time that negative workplace gossip increases psychological distress and lowers SWB among its targets. As a result, several managerial implications are suggested, such as seeking to reduce the prevalence of negative workplace gossip, offering early support to employees in psychological distress, and taking steps to raise the emotional intelligence level of staff.
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    New conceptualization and measurement of corporate identity: evidence from UK food and beverage industry
    (Elsevier, 2019-04-17) Tourky, Marwa; Syed Alwi, Sharifah Faridah; Kitchen, Philip; Melewar, T. C.; Shaalan, Ahmed
    This study extends the conceptualization of corporate identity (CI), and develops a valid and reliable scale for the concept via multistage research design. After detailed literature review, key elements of CI in practice are clarified using 20 semi-structured interviews with senior managers in leading UK companies, followed by an online survey among senior managers in the UK food and beverage sector. Five dimensions of CI are identified following two-step structural equation modelling: consistent image, top management behavioral leadership, employee identification, mission and values dissemination, and founder transformational leadership. The scale is examined for nomological validity with an outcome variable, namely corporate social responsibility. The contribution is novel, as for the first time CI is empirically validated as a second-order hierarchical construct. The resultant scale guides practitioners to specify priorities when developing CI, acts as a tool to assess the effectiveness of activities over time, and enables corrective action where needed.
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    A Rejoinder to: “Questioning the Appropriateness of Examining Guanxi in a Wasta Environment: Why Context Should be Front and Center in Informal Network Research – A Commentary on ‘De-Linking from Western Epistemologies: Using Guanxi-Type Relationships to Attract and Retain Hotel Guests in the Middle East’”
    (Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2023-11-03) Shaalan, Ahmed; Eid, Riyad; Tourky, Marwa
    This rejoinder responds to a commentary on our paper “De-Linking from Western Epistemologies: Using Guanxi-Type Relationships to Attract and Retain Hotel Guests in the Middle East”. We highlight the distinction we drew between guanxi itself and guanxi-type relationships to dispute the assertion that we imposed a Chinese concept onto a Middle Eastern context. Emphasising our own detailed knowledge of wasta, we explain why wasta was not a suitable umbrella term for the personal networks that operate in all 17 countries where our complex cross-cultural research took place, noting, however, that a discussion of this point would have enriched our study. We also refute a number of other specific criticisms of our methods and approach.
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    The role of corporate identity in CSR implementation: An integrative framework
    (Elsevier, 2019-03-01) Tourky, Marwa; Kitchen, Philip; Shaalan, Ahmed
    This paper investigates the relationship between corporate identity (CI) and CSR and describes how CI can underpin the development and implementation of CSR initiatives; thus helping to clarify how best to implement CSR in business practice. Empirical findings derived from interviews with senior executives in leading UK-based companies reveal the steps that firms take to develop and implement CSR initiatives. The study provides a framework which directs management attention to key CI elements and practices, both strategic and operational, required to sustain different stages of CSR implementation. Using CI as a unifying platform, the framework clarifies how CSR originates strategically from CI values and founder's vision as explicated in mission statements, which legitimize CSR and develop a shared culture. CI plays a role in implementing CSR via communication and senior management behavior which impact employee identification with organizational values and goals and behavior, which relate to voluntary participation in CSR.
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    When and how does leader humor promote customer-oriented organizational citizenship behavior in hotel employees?
    (Elsevier, 2022-11-28) Cheng, Bao; Dong, Yun; Kong, Yurou; Shaalan, Ahmed; Tourky, Marwa
    This study explores whether leader humor can encourage staff to exceed job expectations in their positive behavior toward customers, even in the notoriously stressful context of the hospitality industry. Based on our findings, leaders who use humor are more likely to prompt employees to engage in customer-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Leader humor affects customer-oriented OCB through the mediating effect of relational energy. In addition, employee traditionality and relational energy differentiation moderate the process. Using time-lagged data collected from 456 employees in 71 teams in China’s hotel industry, this study adds significant knowledge to the under-researched area of humor and leader humor in the hospitality industry. The findings suggest that hospitality leaders can implement humor to obtain positive effects by raising relational energy and triggering customer-oriented OCB, particularly among less-traditional workers and in situations of low relational energy differentiation.