Centre for Service Management

News and Events

12 Jul 2021

CSM doctoral researcher presents at Frontiers in Service conference

Recently, CSM doctoral researcher Mrs Junyi (Amy) Xie, who is supervised by CSM Associate Director (Enterprise) Dr Keme Ifie and CSM Director Prof Thorsten Gruber, gave a presentation at the prestigious Frontiers in Service conference. The title of Amy’s presentation was “The dual threat of COVID-19 to health and job security - exploring the role of mindfulness in sustaining frontline employee-related outcomes”.

Drawing on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, she investigated individual and organizational mindfulness as valuable resources, which influence employee outcomes of preventative behaviours, emotional exhaustion, and job performance both directly, and indirectly through threat appraisals. She found that individual and organizational mindfulness influence threat appraisals in a “counterbalanced manner”: individual mindfulness decreases threat appraisals, while organizational mindfulness heightens the perceived threat of contracting COVID-19. The threat to health further serves as a double-edged sword, predicting both emotional exhaustion and preventative behaviours, while job insecurity impairs all employee outcomes.