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Introduction

An internal marketing strategy is becoming an essential management tool due to a combination of market forces. First, intense competition is not limited to the external marketplace. Today’s buoyant economy has produced strong growth in jobs and a shortage of professional staff. At the same time, flatter management structures and tougher business decisions mean that you cannot ‘sell’ people, employees or recruits, the promise of a big promotion or a job for life.

When people have choices, the law of supply and demand comes into play. Now more than ever before, organisations have to satisfy their internal customers if they are to operate effectively. At the same time, organisations across the board are going through dramatic and fundamental changes in order to survive in an increasingly competitive, fast-moving global environment. Organisations are flatter and more streamlined. Reporting lines are less clear. Roles and job titles have been blurred. Decisions are made much more quickly. As a result, the lines of communication are far more complex and business messages more difficult, and often worrying, for staff.

In this environment, the future of the relationship between organisations and their people depends on the way they communicate with each other, not as employees but as internal customers. Like external customers, staff have ‘buying’ decisions to make: whether to buy-in to a business objective or initiative, whether to take ownership of a company vision, whether to aspire to achieve organisational goals and to make a valuable contribution, or to live up to its collective values.

The term ‘buy-in’ has found its way into the management vernacular, yet it is often misunderstood. This chapter will explore the meaning and business value of buy-in using a combination of theory, anecdotal evidence, market research and short case studies.

Intellectual and emotional buy-in

Buy-in is, in fact, a two-sided coin. One side is about intellectual buy-in, which means that people are aware of and aligned with key business issues and under-

10 The business value of buy-in How staff understanding and commitment impact on brand and business performance

Kevin Thomson

Lorrie A. Hecker

Lewis, B., & Varey, R. (Eds.). (2000). Internal marketing : Directions for management : directions for management. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointer;'>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from snhu-ebooks on 2021-08-16 23:25:07.

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stand how they can positively affect them. The other, equally valuable, side of the coin is the need to build commitment and engage people in the achievement of goals. Emotion in an organisation is like petrol to a car. You cannot go very far without it.

The mistake many managers make is to concentrate solely on understanding or on winning minds without also striving to build commitment or winning hearts. Looking after people’s minds is the principle behind intellectual capital and knowledge management, management concepts that have become popular recently. Yet, knowledge is only half the battle. Even more importantly, the hidden resources of feelings, beliefs, perceptions and values determine whether or not people apply their knowledge constructively in support of organisational goals. These beliefs, feelings and motivations are the foundation of emotional capital.

Think of the emotions that have been very common for employees to feel in recent years, such as anxiety, stress, anger, fear and suspicion. Then think of the workplace and marketplace challenges described earlier. Common sense tells us that an organisation cannot possibly meet these challenges with such negative emotions at work. Over time, these emotions may manifest themselves as overt industrial action or as more subtle, individual, behaviours such as poor attitudes, increased absenteeism and low productivity. Either way, a business’ reputation and personality will suffer.

On the other hand, positive emotions are an energy source that can drive a company forward. When organisations win hearts and minds and build a strong base of emotional capital, their people become engaged. They feel a sense of ownership for business goals and strive to build strong and profitable relation- ships with external stakeholders.

To understand the components and value of buy-in, the Marketing and Communication Agency (MCA) commissioned Market & Opinion Research International (MORI) in August 1998 to conduct a nationally representative quota sample of 350 managers and staff from British organisations employing 1,000 or more people within a cross-section of industry sectors. About 60 per cent of those interviewed worked in organisations with 5,000-plus employees, and 41 per cent were managers (see Arganbright and Thomson, 1998).

The survey was undertaken to gauge the levels of staff understanding of, and commitment to, their organisations’ business objectives and goals, both on an emotional and intellectual scale. Interviews were carried out in respondents’ homes using CAPI (Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing). Data have been weighted to reflect the national population profile. Where responses do not add up to 100 per cent, the balance is accounted for by those who neither agreed nor disagreed or those who do not know, or is due to rounding of figures.

To compare the levels of intellectual and emotional buy-in and to understand the areas for improvement, respondents were asked about their level of agree- ment with key benchmarking statements based on MCA’s work with many of The Times’s top 100 companies. The critical success factors were then identified for cultivating ‘champions’: people who both understand business goals and brand values and are strongly committed to delivering them.

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The benchmark findings are outlined in Table 10.1, showing the extent of strong agreement with particular statements. The Emotional Benchmarks are written in plain text while the Intellectual Benchmarks are italicised.

Organisations depend on their people having a strong understanding of the business direction. Yet, surprisingly, only 39 per cent of respondents agreed strongly that they understand what they need to do as individuals to support business goals (see Table 10.1).

Even worse, just 27 per cent of respondents strongly agreed that they have a clear sense of their organisation’s vision and direction for the future, and only 14 per cent strongly agreed with all five intellectual benchmarking statements. When asked about their overall awareness and understanding of key business goals, less than half (48 per cent) of respondents rated this as high.

Emotional buy-in fared no better in the survey. The research shows that 51 per cent of respondents rated their overall level of commitment as high. Nonetheless, the responses to the emotional benchmarking statements show a noticeable drop in levels of agreement overall. For example, only 9 per cent of those interviewed felt strongly that their views and participation were valued by their organisation (see Table 10.1). This should send a clear signal to business leaders seeking employee loyalty and buy-in.

There is also a noticeable lack of confidence in leaders, with a mere 15 per cent strongly agreeing that they had confidence in their organisation’s leadership. This

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Table 10.1 Findings of the 1998 MCA/MORI survey

Benchmarks at a glance Strongly agree

I understand what I need to do in my own job to support organisational aims and goals

39%

I feel I play an important part in meeting our customers’ needs 38%

I have the knowledge/skills to do my job in a way that supports organisational goals 37%

I can see how my job performance affects my organisation’s success 34%

The people in my team/work area know how we contribute to organisational goals 28%

I have a clear sense of my organisation’s vision and direction for the future 27%

I am committed to giving my best to help my organisation succeed 27%

My organisation’s culture encourages me to work in innovative ways 17%

I believe in my organisation’s vision for the future 16%

I have confidence in my organisation’s leadership 15%

My views and participation are valued by my organisation 9%

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may explain why only 27 per cent of respondents strongly agreed that they were committed to giving their best to help their organisation succeed. In fact, only 5 per cent of the respondents strongly agreed with all six emotional benchmarks.

Buy-in and business performance

For those respondents who do buy-in both intellectually and emotionally to busi- ness goals, they consistently say it improves their job performance and makes them up to twice as likely to recommend their organisation to others, such as customers, potential recruits and other stakeholders.

Other research confirms the value of the emotional capital of internal customers. When Fortune magazine (Grant, 1998) announced the 100 best compa- nies to work for in America in 1997, as voted for by more than 20,000 employees, there was a powerful demonstration of the emotional contract between these people and their organisations and the impact on business performance. Of the sixty-one companies in the group that had been publicly traded for at least five years, forty-five had consistently yielded higher returns to shareholders than industry averages. These sixty-one companies averaged annual returns of 27.5 per cent, compared with the typical 17.3 per cent (see Grant, 1998).

Another study by the Institute of Work Psychology at the University of Sheffield (Patterson et al., 1997) correlated a direct link between employee attitudes such as organisational commitment and job satisfaction and company performance in terms of profitability and productivity. According to the researchers, ‘12% of the variation between companies in their profitability can be explained by variations in the job satisfaction of their employees. Moreover, 13%…can be explained by the differences between companies in organisational commitment.’

In the MCA/MORI study, the combination of understanding plus commit- ment is shown to create what we have called ‘champions’. These are people who are both willing and able to give their best to help the organisation to achieve its vision and goals, and who will act as ambassadors for their brand and/or organi- sation (see Arganbright and Thomson, 1999).

These champions are vital to overcoming the neutral or negative responses likely from others in their organisation. The MORI normative database (called ‘Perspectives’) has determined that in Britain today around one in five employees are ‘saboteurs’. This means that in an organisation with 1,000 employees, there are some 200 people who would bad-mouth their organisation.

The research suggests that understanding and commitment lead to greater advocacy and, therefore, provide organisations with a much-needed way to counteract saboteurs by creating champions. Yet the research shows that 63 per cent of staff are not champions (see Table 10.2), and unfortunately fall into one of three other camps. These are:

• ‘bystanders’, who clearly understand organisational goals but do not have the emotional drive to support them;

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• ‘loose cannons’, who are highly motivated to support business goals but do not understand what they are or how to achieve them;

• ‘weak links’, who are not aware or concerned about business goals.

Communication as a tool to increase buy-in

The survey shows a direct link between good communication and strong buy-in. People with high levels of buy-in rate their company’s communication highly, and those with low levels generally rate communication as average or poor.

Fortunately, effective communication can strengthen both intellectual and emotional buy-in. As shown in Table 10.3, those who score their communication satisfaction higher also show higher levels of buy-in. In fact, increasing the effec- tiveness of communication from a 6 to 8 out of 10 can potentially double levels of buy-in.

Unfortunately, the respondents in our survey gave the effectiveness of communi- cation a mean score of 6 out of 10. This is consistent with MORI’s 1997 Omnibus Communications Survey, which shows that the effectiveness of internal business communication in Britain is weak and in fact has not improved in the past twenty- seven years. It also is consistent with a 1996 study conducted by MCA and the Corporate Communication Research Unit at the University of Salford (Arganbright et al., 1996), which explored the effectiveness of traditional top-down employee communication compared with a more involving, two-way, approach.

Impact of change on buy-in

Managers are being hit more heavily by change, which may explain their disap-

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“

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Table 10.2 Buy-in among the British workforce

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pointing levels of understanding and commitment. About 40 per cent say a restructuring or merger/acquisition has directly affected them in the last twelve months, compared with 29 per cent of non-managers (Arganbright and Thomson, 1998).

Levels of communication and internal marketing during periods of dramatic organisational change can have profound effects on the overall effectiveness of staff. Schweiger and Denisi (1991) reported on research that compared the impact of communication within two merging Fortune 500 companies. One plant had no formal communication until the formal announcement; the other had early and frequent communication throughout the planning process. The plant without communication saw a 20 per cent decrease in performance, a 24 per cent increase in uncertainty, a 21 per cent decrease in job satisfaction and an 11 per cent decrease in commitment. By comparison, the plant with early and frequent communication saw no change in performance or commitment and only a 2 per cent decrease in job satisfaction.

Supporting this finding is a survey of more than 5,000 managers in the UK. The report, ‘The Quality of Working Life’ (Worrall and Cooper, 1997) found that the majority of those surveyed had been affected by organisational change during the preceding twelve months, yet had failed to see the business benefits. When asked about possible improvements, the largest single category of sugges- tions was about communication, such as greater involvement, the need for more listening by senior managers, and more honest and two-way communication.

Case study: buy-in during a period of change

When Abbey National acquired First National Bank in 1995, the published objective was ‘to provide 10 per cent of Abbey National’s profits’. This was a laudable aim – but not terribly inspiring. Without a stronger mission for First National, staff were losing their sense of belonging. In a survey, the staff were more likely to see themselves as part of Abbey National or their own specialist division than as part of First National. Nevertheless, the organisation did expand

The Business Value of Buy-in 165

Table 10.3 How employees rate the effectiveness of communication

Communication Mean Score

% with high intellectual buy-in or understanding

% with high emotional buy-in or commitment

1–3 36% 34%

4–6 25% 32%

7 44% 50%

8 64% 67%

9 68% 71%

10 85% 79%

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to achieve the Abbey National objective through organic growth and a series of acquisitions. Although this all added up to good news for the business, it only added to the lack of identity and unity internally.

Initially, First National, which is a subsidiary of Abbey National special- ising in business, consumer and motor financing, was seen as a conglomerate of disparate businesses, and staff within the new businesses did not feel inte- grated. As one member of staff commented, there were ‘so many different companies and cultures, it’s hard to know where everything fits in’. Another said, ‘People need to be aware that we all work for the same organisation.’ The finance industry is notoriously competitive, and it became clear that the lack of cohesion and direction was holding First National back. The only way forward was to secure staff buy-in to a challenging yet commonly shared goal.

Many organisations have not yet realised the value of having their people share a common goal or vision for the future. Those that do often fail to secure the very support they seek from their people. Why? Because the vision is issued as a top-down edict that does not address people’s interests, questions and concerns.

To avoid this common pitfall, First National asked the MCA to carry out a strategic review of First National’s communication activities that included exten- sive research to help shape their business strategy. This research involved a combination of one-to-one interviews to isolate key issues among staff and key messages from top managers; MCA’s Issues Groups to explore these issues and identify solutions; and benchmarking research to enable First National to compare itself to industry norms and track its progress.

The research revealed a gap between the aims of the Board and what staff actu- ally understood, and highlighted a number of actions that needed to be taken:

• Develop a strong brand • Align effort around a motivating objective • Reengineer the organisation to integrate newly acquired businesses into the

whole • Introduce a communication strategy to unify the restructured business

First National has already developed a compelling new brand that graphically represents the link between the customer, the intermediary and First National. The new branding has proved very popular: 90 per cent of First National’s managers agreed (41 per cent of them strongly) that the new branding is ‘a posi- tive move forward’.

A second action point was to focus effort on a motivating goal. One person interviewed expressed a commonly held view that the original Abbey National objective was constraining: ‘Why limit our achievement? Why not go for the lot?’ Accordingly, First National’s Executive Chairman, Tim Ingram, forged a straight- forward yet challenging new objective: ‘To become the UK’s leading finance house’. A bulletin, Achieving Our Vision Together, clearly sets out the implications of

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this objective, together with what it means both corporately and individually. Each bulletin contains information on the staff feedback and what managers are doing about it.

To meet the third action point, the organisation is currently undergoing a major restructuring and reengineering project. The acquired businesses are being inte- grated into a clearer structure, delineated by product: motor, consumer, business, and retail finance. MCA is working with First National’s Project Team to integrate a marketing-driven communication strategy with the changes.

The internal–external link

After a decade of cost cutting, downsizing, reengineering and the like, greater understanding and commitment offer another avenue for enhancing business performance. Every organisation has the ability to unlock the full potential of its business and its brand through its people. Yet most organisations fail to do so.

Today’s service-driven economy has moved the marketing discipline from a mass approach to one focused on investment in targeted relationships. As such, it is essential that marketers consider the question ‘who are customers really having relationships with these days?’ They are certainly not having them with those inanimate products or services that are offered for sale or with the logos or two- dimensional branded images.

Relationships are about people and personalities. This means that customers are building relationships with the people they encounter within organisations – the employees – and the personality that these people give to their organisations. This simple truth is at the heart of internal marketing, which is, in essence, marketing from the inside, out.

This relationship between internal and external customers is not well under- stood. For this reason MCA commissioned a second survey with MORI in April 1999 (Arganbright and Thomson, 1999) to provide a national benchmark for the effectiveness of staff interactions with customers today, and the commercial benefits that can be gained when people represent their organisations and brands well. This research shows the damage that negative encounters with staff are having on customer loyalty. Fortunately, it also shows the power of staff in building profitable and long-term relationships with customers, and offers vital insights for companies aiming to help their people become a ‘living brand’.

For this survey, MORI conducted face-to-face interviews with a nationally representative quota sample of 925 people in the British general public. Interviews were carried out in respondents’ homes, using CAPI (Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing). Data have been weighted to reflect the national population profile.

Respondents were asked to think about the companies that make products/services rather than the retailer distributing them. The interviewers were also able to give further instruction at their discretion, asking the respon- dents to focus on occasions when they have bought or considered buying a company’s product or service and also had dealings with that company’s staff.

The Business Value of Buy-in 167

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Staff impact on customer relationships

Staff attitudes and behaviours have a significant impact on customer loyalty, more so than many traditional marketing tools. The top three factors that deter- mine whether customers will make a repeat purchase or recommend a company to others are quality, price, and how the staff treats them. In terms of advocacy, 41 per cent of customers say that they are most likely to decide whether to buy or not buy a company’s products or services again because of the way staff treat them, ahead of advertising, branding and promotions.

Unfortunately, consumers say that staff currently are not up to the challenge and in many cases are actually damaging relationships with them. The primary reason consumers give for feeling put off from purchasing a company’s product or service is how they were treated by staff; ahead of price or quality. In the previous three months alone, one in six consumers have been put off from a purchase because of the way they were treated by staff.

Younger and more affluent consumers – a group sought after by most compa- nies – appear even more dissatisfied with their treatment from staff. Nearly a quarter of those aged between 15 and 34 (22 per cent) and those with a house- hold income of £30,000 and above (23 per cent) were put off from making a purchase because of the treatment received from staff.

‘Brand ambassador benchmarks’

To understand what customers experience, we asked them to consider the effec- tiveness of staff against twelve ‘brand ambassador’ benchmarks (see Table 10.4). These explore how well the staff are representing their organisation or brand in dealings with customers. They reveal that what customers experience is a far cry from the brand and corporate values most companies espouse:

• Less than half of customers feel staff showed a genuine interest in helping. • Only one in five say staff showed appreciation for their interest or purchase. • Less than a third say that staff appeared committed to doing their best, and

only one in ten were seen to show pride in their products and services.

The link to competitiveness

The well-known marketing mix of product, price, place and promotion certainly does require a fifth ‘P’ – people. Only price and quality – which can be repli- cated by competitors – are on occasions more important to customers than their dealings with staff. When customers feel that staff show a genuine interest in helping (the characteristic that most influences their decision to buy), they are more than twice as likely to purchase a company’s products and services again and more than three times as likely to recommend the company to others.

What happens when customers experience more of these brand ambassador benchmark behaviours? As staff deliver against more of these, customers’

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intention to repeat purchase and recommend the company increase significantly. In Table 10.5, each star represents the number of benchmarks that customers say applied to their last purchase. One star means only one benchmark was mentioned; four stars indicates that four or more benchmarks were mentioned.

According to our survey, 22 per cent of customers today experience ‘no-star’ interactions and only 21 per cent have ‘four-star’ experiences. The benefit for companies is that moving from a no-star experience to a four-star experience makes a customer five times as likely to recommend their company and more than doubles their plans to definitely purchase again.

Companies can boost profits by almost 100 per cent by retaining just 5 per cent more of their customers, according to Reichheld in The Loyalty Effect (1994). Our survey shows this link between brand ambassadors and customer loyalty. The question for many organisations is how to turn their people into brand ambassadors?

We at MCA believe that low levels of staff buy-in, as revealed in the research conducted by MCA and MORI in 1998, are causing the staff attitudes and behaviours found in this latest survey (Arganbright and Thomson, 1998). In our opinion, and our experience with numerous clients, it is internal marketing that holds the key to building buy-in and ultimately better relationships with internal and external customers.

The Business Value of Buy-in 169

Table 10.4 The effectiveness of staff against twelve ‘brand ambassador’ benchmarks

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Case study: preparing for competition in the Royal Mail

The direct mail/delivery market in the UK will open to competition in the year 2000, making business clients easy prey for any provider that is better able to service their needs. The Royal Mail’s goal is to protect and grow their share of this key market by ensuring they are seen as the Number One quality provider.

Despite the importance of business clients and the threats posed by future competitors, many people working in the Royal Mail did not understand the significance of the business market. In fact, many front-line sorters and mail deliverers had a negative conception of direct mail; they saw it as becoming an obstacle to good service and market growth. As a result, the delivery times for direct mail were often longer than those for first-class and second-class post sent by private consumers. With two-thirds of turnover coming from business clients and direct mail, this trend could have serious consequences for the Royal Mail.

The organisation recognised that an internal marketing approach was needed to shift the attitudes of more than one million staff and prepare for new competition. The first step was a research programme to clarify the strategic messages that senior management wanted to communicate, specifically on direct mail and also more generally on the future of the organisation and its business. Once the key messages were defined, MCA and the Royal Mail worked to uncover the cause of the negative views and to agree the means to reverse them. Jane Tebbey, MCA’s senior consul- tant on the project, explains: ‘We needed to find out what would make a difference to people. In a series of focus groups we discovered that many of their views were coloured by their own experiences with direct mail as a consumer and by the views of the domestic customers to whom they delivered mail.’

In addition to their notion of direct mail as ‘junk mail’, delivery staff under- standably felt a strong sense of identity with the doorstep customer, and much less affiliation with the business clients. There was also confusion between direct and unaddressed mail that was fuelling the negative perceptions even more.

Previous internal communication had not helped matters either, according to Jane: ‘We discovered that some people didn’t believe what they’d been told or hadn’t made the link between the importance of direct mail and the future threat of competition.’ For example, one focus group participant commented,

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Table 10.5 The customer-value index

Note: Based on number of brand ambassador benchmarks that applied

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‘We don’t see the results from all this extra mail.’ Another remarked, ‘They say competition will be a threat, but I just don’t believe it.’

The results of the research have formed the basis for an internal marketing plan in which messages are rigorously and consistently delivered using every available media channel. The plan also addresses a need to introduce mecha- nisms for listening, regular focus groups, and collecting and acting on feedback.

Conclusion

Marketing-based internal communication is the key to forging strong emotional contracts between individuals and the organisation (Thomson, 1998). Emotional and intellectual capital are created through this emotional contract, because there is an honest attempt to balance and satisfy the needs of the organisation and those of internal customers. The critical part of this contract is that internal customers know what is going on, where they fit and what they need to do. Feeling valued and engaged, and knowing that individual contributions count, will increase employees’ stock of emotional capital in the business. Indeed, the single most important force affecting internal and external marketing is the what’s in it for me? (WIIFM) interest of people involved. Unless they experience relationship marketing themselves, internal customers are never likely to understand, or be motivated enough to use, the approach to drive all their dealings with external customers or with other vital stakeholders within and around the organisation.

In short, if ‘inside in’ (the organisation talking to itself) is not working, ‘inside out’ and ‘outside in’ (the organisation talking to customers and others) is even less likely to work. The business may achieve some of its goals, but it will fail to achieve its full potential for lifetime relationships and profitable business dealings.

Why then are all organisations not practising internal marketing as a manage- ment discipline? The answer may rest in the statement of accounts. Goodwill is the accepted accounting principle that reconciles a larger-than-normal return on tangible assets and highlights brand value on a company’s financial statements. By and large, the only other intangible assets that are taken into account are patents, trademarks, copyrights and the like: the most overt representations of ‘intellectual assets’.

The fact that knowledge is beginning to be treated as an asset is no small achievement. But knowledge held in people’s heads is only valuable when they want to apply it constructively. Emotional capital, the other side of ‘buy-in’, also merits a place in financial valuation. Without hard financial measures, internal marketing will not receive the attention it deserves from the business community. Relationships must also be valued as central to the business.

While the value of internal marketing may be a new idea for business leaders, customer retention is not. The number of businesses citing ‘customer retention’ as a critically important measure in the next five years has jumped to nearly 60 per cent, according to a 1998 survey of 200 senior executives in North America, Europe and Asia by Anderson Consulting and the Economist Intelligence Unit (Graham and Goodman, 1998).

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A comprehensive survey by The Conference Board and Heidrick & Struggles confirms that CEOs share this view (Berman, 1999). This survey of more than 650 CEOs worldwide reports that the top management challenges are to find ways to build customer loyalty, reduce costs, engage their employees, and manage mergers, acquisitions or strategic alliances.

The evidence of the research and case studies explored in this chapter suggests that an internal marketing approach can lead to more satisfied internal customers who have the understanding and commitment needed to build more profitable relationships with external customers and more than fulfil the organi- sation’s brand promise. In a world where virtually everything is replicable and building relationships with external customers is invaluable, internal customers are the greatest – and perhaps only – sustainable competitive advantage. Can any organisation or marketer afford to overlook them?

References

Arganbright, L. and Thomson, K. (1998) The Buy-in Benchmark, Marlow and London: The Marketing & Communication Agency Ltd (MCA) and Market & Opinion Research International (MORI).

—— (1999) The Brand Ambassador Benchmark, Marlow and London: The Marketing & Communication Agency Ltd (MCA) and Market & Opinion Research International (MORI).

Arganbright, L., Thomson, K. and Varey, R.J. (1996) Breaking out of the Employee Communi- cation Time Warp, London and Salford: The Marketing & Communication Agency Ltd (MCA) and the Corporate Communication Research Unit, University of Salford.

Berman, M.A. (1999) The CEO Challenge, New York: The Conference Board and Heidrick & Struggles.

Graham, A. and Goodman, A. (1998) Managing Customer Relationships: Lessons from the Leaders, New York: Anderson Consulting and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Grant, L. (1998) ‘Happy Workers, High Returns’, Fortune, 12 January. Patterson, M.G., West, M.A., Lawthom, R. and Nickell, S. (1997) People Management,

Organisational Culture and Company Performance, Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield, and the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics.

Reichheld, F.F. (1994) The Loyalty Effect, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Schweiger, D. and Denisi, A. (1991) ‘Communication with Employees Following a

Merger: A Longitudinal Field Experiment’, Academy of Management Journal 34(March): 110–35.

Thomson, K. (1998) Emotional Capital, London: Capstone Publishing. Watson Wyatt (1997) ‘Work Studies’ (annual survey of more than 9,000 employees),

London: Watson Wyatt. Worrall, L. and Cooper, C.L. (1997) ‘The Quality of Working Life: 1997 Survey of

Managers’ Changing Experiences’, London: The Institute of Management.

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