Why are we more likely to tip some service occupations than others? Theory,evidence, and implications

Ideas about why consumers tip some service occupations more often than others are tested using occupation scores derived from online ratings of 122 service occupations. Results indicate that U.S. consumers are more likely to tip occupations for which (i) workers’ performances can be more easily evaluated by consumers than by managers, (ii) workers provide customized service, (iii) workers’ income, skill and needed judgment are low, and (iv) workers are less happy than customers during the service encounter. Occupations with greater frequency of customer patronage and/or greater likelihood of encountering the same service provider on multiple service occasions are not more likely than other occupations to be tipped. These findings support some and disconfirm other expectations derived from a theory that occupational differences in tipping are attributable to occupation characteristics that more strongly/consistently evoke motives for tipping. They also identify types of services for which counter-normative tipping policies are more or less likely to be successful and suggest sources of resistance that must be overcome if those policies are to succeed.     

Black–White Earnings Gap among Restaurant Servers: A Replication,Extension, and Exploration of Consumer Racial Discrimination in Tipping

There is a rich history of social science research centering on racial inequalities that continue to be observed across various markets (e.g., labor, housing, and credit markets) and social milieus. Existing research on racial discrimination in consumer markets is, however, relatively scarce and that which has been done has disproportionately focused on consumers as the victims of race‐based mistreatment. As such, we know relatively little about how consumers contribute to inequalities in their roles as perpetrators of racial discrimination. In response, in this article, we elaborate on a line of research that is only in its infancy stages of development and yet is ripe with opportunities to advance the literature on consumer racial discrimination and racial earnings inequities among tip‐dependent employees in the United States. Specifically, we analyze data derived from an exit survey of restaurant consumers (N = 394) in an attempt to replicate, extend, and further explore the recently documented effect of service providers’ race on restaurant consumers’ tipping decisions. Our results indicate that both white and black restaurant customers discriminate against black servers by tipping them less than their white co‐workers. Importantly, we find no evidence that this black tip penalty is the result of inter‐racial differences in service skills possessed by black and white servers. We conclude by delineating directions for future research in this neglected but salient area of study.     

The history of tipping—from sixteenth-century England to United States in the 1910s

Tipping is a multi-billion-dollar phenomenon that challenges the traditional assumption of selfish economic agents who have no feelings and do not care about social norms. This article reviews the early history of tipping and offers an economic analysis of different aspects of tipping. Using the historical evidence, it then addresses two major questions about tipping: why do people tip? And does tipping improve service quality? The reasons for tipping changed over the years, but conforming to social norms and avoiding embarrassment were generally the main reasons. Tipping seems to improve service quality; the extent of the improvement varies across occupations.     

Tipping as risk sharing

Tipping is often dismissed as an exception to the assumption of rational economic agents. This paper describes situations where tipping is, in fact, an effective mechanism for risk sharing and welfare improvement. When risk-averse customers purchase a service with uncertain quality, tipping can reduce the customer's exposure to risk by making part of the price of the service discretionary. These findings help explain why we tend to tip restaurant workers but not retail workers and why some high-risk service providers, such as lawyers and automobile mechanics, are not typically tipped.     

Service gratuities and tipping: A motivational framework

In many countries around the world, consumers leave voluntary payments of money (called “tips”) to service workers who have served them. Since tips are an expense that consumers are free to avoid, tipping is an anomalous behavior that many economists regard as “irrational” or “mysterious”. In this paper, I present a motivational framework that offers plausible explanations for: (1) why people tip, (2) how tipping norms came into existence and evolve over time, (3) why tipping varies across individuals and situations, (4) why tipping is more common for some occupations than others, and (5) why tipping varies across nations. Many hypotheses generated from this framework are supported by existing research, but many other implications of the framework have yet to be adequately tested. Thus, the framework provides a promising and much needed theoretical guide for future research on a fascinating consumer behavior.     

Gratitude and gratuity: a meta-analysis of research on the service-tipping relationship

The relationship between tip size and evaluations of the service was assessed in a meta-analysis of seven published and six unpublished studies involving 2547 dining parties at 20 different restaurants. Consistent with theories about equity motivation and the economic functions of tipping, there was a positive and statistically significant relationship between tip size and service evaluations. However, that relationship was much smaller than is generally supposed. The confounding effects of customer mood and patronage frequency as well as the reverse-causality effects of server favoritism toward big tippers were all examined and shown to be insufficient explanations for the correlation between tipping and service evaluations. These findings suggest that tippers are concerned about equitable economic relationships with servers, but that equity effects may be too weak for tip size to serve as a valid measure of server performance or for tipping to serve as an effective incentive for delivering good service.     

Business strategy and the social norm of tipping

Tipping is an important economic phenomenon, involving about $47 billion a year in the US food industry alone, and trillions of dollars across different occupations and countries over the years. Moreover, tipping is a major source of income for millions of workers. This article discusses the implications of tipping for business strategy in the relevant industries. For example, firms can choose to impose a compulsory service charge in lieu of tipping - what are the advantages and disadvantages of doing so? How does tipping change the profit-maximizing level of investing in screening job applicants, training workers, monitoring them, and providing performance-based incentives by the firm? Can industries such as the music industry use tips (i.e., prices being voluntary and determined by the customers) as an alternative business model?     

Women farm workers on South African deciduous fruit farms: Gender relations and the structuring of work

Utilizing a feminist perspective and based on data obtained by interviewing 350 women farm workers on South African deciduous fruit farms, the article analyses how existing gender relations structure various aspects of women's paid work on farms. It explores the recruitment and employment of women, the division of labour and existing wage differentials between women and men workers, and the nature of women's work relations. Women's participation in the reconstitution of existing gender relations and the obstruction of women's choices are interpreted within the context of ‘the farm as family’ and the farm worker community as subculture. It is suggested that some women workers on fruit farms are gaining a measure of control over certain aspects of their work lives. The transformation of traditional to neo-paternalistic labour relations, the extension of labour legislation to the agricultural sector, and especially farmers' changing perceptions of women (and consequently their utilization as farm workers) have been central to women farm workers gaining more power in the workplace.     

Understanding labour processes in global production networks: a case study of the football industry in Pakistan

ABSTRACT

Over the last few decades, the changing nature of global production and distribution processes has raised a number of critical questions regarding work and employment relations. Presenting a qualitative case study of the football industry in Pakistan as an example of the general mechanism of the social relations of re/production in a global system of industrial organization, this research highlights how and under what conditions informal workers are embedded in extended global production networks. By drawing on the integrated conceptual framework of the global production network (GPN) and labour process theory (LPT), this research sheds light on the working conditions and living realities of informal workers. A potential contribution of this paper is to extend the horizon of production network theory by analysing the work and employment conditions of informal workers, which are absent in existing discussions of these conceptual frameworks.     

Non‐job work/unpaid caring: Gendered industrial relations in long‐term care

This article explores the operation of gender and industrial relations in long‐term care work or nursing home work, ‘from within’ the experience of the predominantly female workforce in seven unionized facilities in Canada. Drawing on qualitative case study data in non‐profit facilities, the article argues that the main industrial relations challenges facing long‐term care workers are that their workplace priorities do not fit within existing, gendered, industrial relations processes and institutions. This article starts from the experience of women and threads this experience through other layers of social organization such as: global and local policy directions including austerity, New Public Management, and social and healthcare funding; industrial relations mechanisms and policy; and workers’ formal [union] and informal efforts to represent their interests in the workplace. The strongest themes in the reported experience of the women include: manufacturing conditions for unpaid work; increasing management and state dependence on unpaid care work; fostering loose boundaries; and limiting respect and autonomy as aspects of care work. The article extends the feminist political economy by analysing the links between the policies noted above and frontline care work. Building on gendered organizational theory the article also introduces the concept of non‐job work and suggests a fourth industrial relations institution, namely the needs and gendered expectations of residents, families and workers themselves, operating within the liminal spaces in care work.     

Job Satisfaction and Intention to Seek Graduate Education

This study of the relationship between job satisfaction and intention to seek graduate education among human service workers tests the hypothesis that intention will be stronger among satisfied senior practitioners (those in their current job for three or more years) and among dissatisfied junior workers. In November 1993, a questionnaire designed to measure various aspects of both job satisfaction and intent to pursue graduate education was distributed to all 83 bachelor-level human service workers in four agencies. Moderated regression analyses, with several control variables from background information about the 67 respondents, repeatedly supported the hypothesis. Discussion also covers secondary findings, limitations of the study, and implications of the principal finding for both educators and social service administrators.     

Le syndicat des travailleurs domestiques de Rio de Janeiro : un observatoire des transformations de l'emploi domestique au Brésil

This study of the major dimensions of actions undertaken by the labor union for household employees in Rio de Janeiro shows how the new “social rights” extended to these personal service workers has led to a new sense of what is “fair” and to an increase in lawsuits with employers. Given its place in labor relations courts, the union's position is ambivalent. Light is shed on the tensions between various categories of persons who visit the union's offices — tensions that tell us much about social relations. Attention is then turned to this small organization's role in labor courts: after cases have been heard, household employees often have a feeling that their rights have been upheld.     

Evaluation of job satisfaction in a sample of Spanish social workers through the ‘Job Satisfaction Survey’ scale

The objective of this study is to determine the level of job satisfaction experienced by social workers and to establish whether there are significant differences between the various levels of job satisfaction and a series of personal features and job characteristics. The participants were 947 social workers (861 women and 86 men) belonging to 35 of the 36 Professional Associations existing in Spain. The measurement tool used is the Job Satisfaction Survey scale, designed by Spector [2002. Psicología Industrial y Organizacional: Investigación y Práctica [Industrial and organizational psychology: Research and practice]. México: Manual Moderno]. The results show that the social workers surveyed experience moderate levels of job satisfaction (M?=?115.8; SD?=?21.4). The intrinsic factor that seems to have the greatest positive influence on job satisfaction is the nature of the job, while the extrinsic factors of pay, fringe benefits, and operating conditions are the ones that contribute most to job dissatisfaction, and social workers have no control over any of them.     

Reducing youth's drug abuse through training social workers for cognitive–behavioral integrated treatment

Cognitive–behavioral integrated treatment (CBIT) is an intervention that social workers can learn to treat youth's drug abuse by cognitive restructuring, behavioral modification, and goal setting. A way to enhance the learning is training specifically for CBIT. Evaluation of the effectiveness of such training in raising social workers' CBIT practice and their young service users' illicit-drug-free days is the aim of this experimental study. This study first randomly assigned 14 outreach social workers to receive training for CBIT and 14 outreach social workers not to receive the training. The study also assessed 222 young service users (aged 11–22 years) engaged by 28 outreach social workers before the training and 169 of them after the training in a six-month follow-up. Furthermore, the study identified the reduction in the youth's dysfunctional cognition of playfulness as a means to deter the youth's drug abuse, based on personal interviews with outreach social workers and their young service users before the training. Derived from the statistical analysis of assessment data, results principally showed cascading effects from the social worker's reception of the CBIT training to the young service user's reception of CBIT, reduced playfulness, and lengthened drug-free days. A supplementary finding was that the young service user's time in the outreach social work service prolonged drug-free days and reduced playfulness. These results imply that the outreach social work service, CBIT training, and CBIT are useful for treating youth's illicit drug abuse.     

Teaching and learning: an exchange of knowledge in the university among students,service users,and professors

The education system's responsibility for social workers to be is a central argument in the academic arena. The purpose of the article is to present an innovative perspective about social work education promoted for several years in the Catholic University in Milan. The education experience with students, social workers to be, gave life to a particular workshop ‘Social Work Orientation’ characterized by different and innovative activities. The experience presented focuses on relational principles such as empowerment, peer facilitation, involvement of service users, and facilitation, following the idea that teaching and learning could be a simultaneous process. Revealing is the experience of ‘service users as professors’, a meeting day in the university between students and service users, a sharing of life stories and relationships. The future social workers learn from the service users, accustoming themselves to considering the service users as people able to cope with their life situations even before enrichment with all the professional tools. The feedback collected about this experience (from students, service users, and professors) shows that the possibility to experiment from the beginning in this approach facilitates the students to become social workers oriented to empowerment and relational processes.     

Counselling problem drinkers and social work education in Scotland

The high incidence of alcohol related problems in Scotland and in the caseloads of Scottish social workers is noted. Exploration is made of the movement away from the disease concept of alcohol misuse and institutional treatment to an emphasis on counselling in the community. Social work education has neglected these developments. Barriers to successful individual counselling interventions are examined. These include deficiencies in course content, fieldwork, placements, organisational contexts and the attitudes of students, social workers, social work educators and fieldwork supervisors.

An examination is made of some models of alcohol related problems. Developing the ability of social work students and social workers to intervene successfully with individual problem drinkers includes highlighting the significance of much existing knowledge and skills, while considering some additional and specialised knowledge, accompanied by the provision of appropriate support and supervision.     

Cultural Identity,Social Capital,and Social Control of Young Korean Americans: Extending the Theory of Intercultural Public Relations

Through 10 in-depth interviews and 2 focus groups, this exploratory study examines how young Korean Americans perceive cultural identity, utilize social capital, and identify conflicts that arise between themselves and their significant others, particularly focusing on how they integrate Korean and American culture. The findings reveal that young Korean Americans have multifaceted, situational identities, which go beyond existing cultural stereotypes, maximize their religious-based social capital and human capital, and experience a varying range of cultural tensions and conflicts in social settings. Therefore, situational cultural identity, a new category of intercultural public relations is suggested, and implications for the practice of public relations are discussed.     

The Social Worker as Transdisciplinary Professional: A Reflective Account

The transdisciplinary key worker model requires early childhood intervention professionals to make radical adjustment in their respective scopes of knowledge and practice. Focused on the author’s brief experience in a key worker role, the article highlights challenges and contradictions that arise when health and welfare professionals are expected not only to exchange knowledge, skills, and expertise, but also to perform each other’s work. Two contextual, reflective accounts of the reasons why social workers should be cautious in task transfers in transdisciplinary teams are given. The article renews support for social workers playing professionally appropriate roles in early childhood intervention teams in ways that can protect best service delivery to children with disability and their families.     

Social work guanxi: a reflexive account of the social work relationship in the Chinese context

ABSTRACT

In a guanxi-driven acquaintanceship, the worker, the client, and the community are tied together more closely than they are in mutually agreed-upon service contracts. This paper re-examines the contemporary boundaries in the social work relationship, especially in Asian nations such as China, where ‘relationships’ are generally translated and perceived as ‘guanxi’. The indigenisation of social work must be managed with care when translating from West to East. Drawing from the experiences of community development projects in rural Hong Kong, this paper discusses how guanxi among social workers, clients and other stakeholders in Chinese communities might challenge the professionalism of social work and breach the boundaries of social work relationships.