Emeritus Professor Martin Watts

Customer complaints are inevitable given the complexity of products (service) and the inherent need for human involvement in aspects of service delivery. In today¿s competitive, socially networked environment, customers are empowered by technology, their expectations increasing, with the magnitude of complaint effects having increased with the digital age. Complainants now regularly take to social media, review sites, blogs and YouTube to vent their frustration, spreading negative word of mouth (Tronvoll 2007, 2012) which can have damaging effects for an organisation¿s brand equity and profitability. Managers know that customer complaints are important. For instance, effective complaint management has confirmed positive links between increased satisfaction, increased loyalty, repurchase intention and subsequent higher company returns in the literature (Casado-Díaz et al. 2009; Fornell 1992; Homburg and Furst 2005) and positive consumer experiences shown to be related to increased loyalty (Moliner et al. 2010; Johnston 2001). However, the return on investment (ROI) or complaint management profitability (CMP) of increasing satisfaction through ¿good¿ complaints handling has only received scant research attention. A critical reason for the lack of literature on ROI and CMP is difficulty attaining data relating to the complaint management function. Organisations do not measure all costs and benefits of complaint handling (Stauss and Schoeler 2004; Stone 2011). Nor can organisations or researchers agree on what constitutes the costs and benefits of complaints and their handling. Unfortunately, given the difficulty attributing a financial value to the benefits, costs are more usually measured, leading to complaints handling departments often being regarded as ¿cost centres¿ rather than providing opportunities for increased benefits to the firm (Sandelands 1994). The purpose of this paper is to explore the literature relating to ROI of customer complaints management to the organisation, identify the potential development on the subject in academia and direct future research with the goal of enhance complaint handling management practices for organisations. This paper reviews the literature on defining ¿good¿ complaints handling before reviewing the literature on ROI and profitability of complaints handling. Second, the drivers of ROI and profitability of complaints handling from the literature are highlighted. Finally, the paper concludes by synthesising the findings of the literature and proposes specific research questions to guide future research.

This chapter contrasts two policy responses to rising income insecurity: the introduction of a universal Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) and the implementation of a Job Guarantee (JG).1 Both initiatives challenge the prescriptions of the dominant neoliberal policy agenda.2

In the measurement of occupational segregation by race and gender, pairwise comparisons of employment distributions, based on the Index of Dissimilarity, are unsatisfactory. A multidimensional approach, based on Silber (1992), is adopted to analyze trends in segregation across six race/gender groups and four groups of occupations over the period 1983-92. Black males and females have integrated fastest, whereas Hispanics integrated slowest. White-collar occupations exhibited a modest pro-cyclical rate of integration, but blue-collar occupations exhibited little change. The empirical results are linked to the recent radical literature that explores the relationship between job exclusion, racial discrimination and wage differentials (Mason 1993 and Williams 1991). © 1995, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.

Over the period 1979¿92, the gender and status composition of employment has undergone significant change in Britain, which cannot be attributed merely to cyclical influences. In this paper changes in the pattern of employment by occupation, gender and part-time and full-time status are decomposed to cast some light on three hypotheses (buffer stock, substitution and segregation) which are designed to explain the growth of female employment in Britain over the period 1979¿92. The results reveal that women have made some progress in achieving full-time employment positions, after correction for the influence of structural change and the declining full-time share of employment. It is noted, however, that following the labour market legislation of the 1980s full-time employment is not necessarily more secure than part-time. The long run substitution of part-time for full-time employment has benefited the employment of women, even though their share of part-time employment has declined. The analysis informs the debate on the flexible firm at least in respect of numerical flexibility. © 1995, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

In this article, the pattern of occupational segregation by sex in the UK between 1979 and 1989 is explored through the decomposition of the new Karmel Maclachlan index. Over the upturn, 1983¿89, integration of the sexes, as measured by the Composition Effect occurred faster for full-time employment than total (full-time and part-time) employment. On the other hand, integration, in general, proceeded more slowly over the downturn of 1979¿83 but total employment showed a more rapid rate of desegregation than full-time employment. Further analysis of the index, based on notional redistributions of part-time and full-time employment, confirms that part-time employment appears to be disproportionately responsible for the overall level of occupational sex segregation and to inhibit its decline over the upswing. These results are attributed to the different labour supply behaviour of males and females and the propensity of employers to treat part-time employees as a flexible reserve. Policies are outlined to counteract both the unequal treatment of part-time workers, particularly women, and the allocative inefficiency caused by the growth of part-time employment, relative to full-time employment. © Edward Arnold 1992

Real wage maintenance is shown to be incompatible with a currency devaluation in an N sector model in which production requires imported raw materials. Irrespective of the type of economy and the first round response of price setters the competitive advantage of the devaluation is dissipated, under constant markups, in the long run by the ensuing (convergent) wage price adjustment process. Wage adjustment designed to maintain income shares has the same asymptotic properties. In an economy with both competitive and imperfectly competitive sectors, the devaluation operates unevenly. Hence such a shock imposes significant pressures on a centralised wage fixation system.