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Two more unlikely bedfellows than marketing and the British National Health Service would have been difficult to find five years ago. Increasing demand, making a profit and competing for customers were less than burning issues for the NHS. However, now that discussion of such topics as internal markets, income generation and close co‐operation with the private health care sector is commonplace, marketing would appear to have a great deal more relevance to the public health care sector.

This chapter focuses on women's descriptions of their own violence in nineteenth-century Ireland, as revealed in prisoner petitions held in the National Archives of Ireland. It uses the case files of women imprisoned or sentenced to death for violent crimes such as infanticide, manslaughter, murder, wounding and assault. This chapter takes an empirical approach and considers the ways that women explained and rationalised their violent acts. An analysis of the petitions offers an insight into women's views of their own violence, gendered attitudes at the time, and women's sense of the factors that might lead to a commutation of sentence. The accuracy or truthfulness of the petitions is not important in this study; instead, the chapter explores the self-image that women wanted to portray and the tactics that they opted to use to seek a reduction in their sentences. As shown in this chapter, most women emphasised their passivity: they typically claimed to be innocent, coerced or provoked into violence.

We have long been obsessed with the dream of creating intelligent machines. This vision can be traced back to Greek civilization, and the notion that mortals somehow can create machines that think has persisted throughout history. Until this decade these illusions have borne no substance. The birth of the computer in the 1940s did cause a resurgence of the cybernaut idea, but the computer's role was primarily one of number‐crunching and realists soon came to respect the enormous difficulties in crafting machines that could accomplish even the simplest of human tasks.

Over the next few months a lively image of Dick Whittington and his cat will be making its appearance in the capital. Walking briskly along, with his cat trotting obediently behind or dashing ahead with its tail in the air, he will stride across the print and posters of the Museum of London as the Museum's new corporate image.

Ind suggests front line employees can be segmented according to their level of brand-supporting performance. His employee typology has not been empirically tested. The paper aims to explore front line employee performance in retail banking, and profile employee types.

Attitudinal and demographic data from a sample of 404 front line service employees in a leading Irish bank informs a typology of service employees.

Champions, Outsiders and Disruptors exist within retail banking. The authors provide an employee profile for each employee type. They found Champions amongst males, and older employees. The highest proportion of female employees surveyed were Outsiders. Disruptors were more likely to complain, and rated their performance lower than any other employee type. Contrary to extant literature, Disruptors were more likely to hold a permanent contract than other employee types.

The authors augment the literature by providing insights about the profile of three employee types: Brand Champions, Outsiders and Disruptors. Moreover, the authors postulate the influence of leadership and commitment on each employee type. The cluster profiles raise important questions for hiring, training and rewarding front line banking employees. The authors also provide guidelines for managers to encourage Champions, and curtail Disruptors.

This paper aims to explore managers' and employees' views about service brand sabotage at the front line in retail banking. The current literature emphasises the role of the employee in service delivery, and advocates the cultivation of brand ambassadors – employees who support the service brand through their performance. Yet there also exist saboteurs – employees who actively work against the brand, and there is a dearth of literature exploring the nature of this group. Moreover, much of the extant literature explores service performance from the perspective of the consumer and little is known about employees' views. This paper seeks to present managers' and employees' views about service performance, and service sabotage.

The study incorporates findings from in‐depth interviews with bank managers, and a survey of 438 branch employees reveals sabotage drivers in the “job for life” banking environment in Ireland.

The paper identifies employee fear, overwork and compliance demands as issues which influence job dissatisfaction, consumer resentment and employee insecurity.

The research is exploratory. The paper advocates further research to confirm the components of service sabotage, and test the influence of these components on consumers' perceptions of the service.

The paper offers suggestions to help managers to better manage sabotage in this sector, and recommend future research in other highly structured services sectors.

The paper provides new insights into the constraints on the banking employee that may lead to service sabotage. It also offers advice to managers that may help them better harness employees as brand ambassadors.

This paper aims to explore front line employee performance in retail banking and presents distinct components of employee performance, including extra‐role and sabotage behaviours.

Data was collected from Irish bank employees. Usable responses were received from 404 respondents and subjected to exploratory factor analysis. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to undertake a confirmatory factor analysis of the emergent five‐factor model.

Results indicate front line employee performance is multi‐faceted and comprised of civility, assurance and reliability, customer orientation, as well as extra‐role behaviour and anti‐role behaviour, or sabotage.

This exploratory study focuses on the Irish banking sector. To explore the generalisabilty of results, replication studies among other samples of branch banking employees in other countries are in order. Moreover, our survey is limited to the views of branch employees. We advocate research among bank managers and customers to triangulate potentially divergent views about performance.

Findings have implications for recruitment, training and rewards. To ensure new hires are service minded, managers must consider their potential for extra‐role or sabotage behaviour. Employees who demonstrate extra‐role behaviours must be rewarded to encourage the adoption of such behaviours. Managers must also seek to minimise job stress in order to curtail anti‐role behaviours.

This paper offers insights into employees' views about their own performance at the front line. It extends the conceptualisation of service quality, by considering extra‐role behaviour and sabotage as components of employee performance.