In 3 separate studies, the authors developed measures of different social mechanisms used in the interaction between a customer and a service provider and examined their effects. Service relationships occur when a customer has repeated contact with the same provider. Service encounters occur when the customer interacts with a different provider each time. Service pseudorelationships are a particular kind of encounter in which a customer interacts with a different provider each time, but within a single company. The 3 studies showed consistently that customers having a service relationship with a specific provider had more service interactions and were more satisfied than those who did not have one. These results held across 7 different service areas, 3 diverse samples, and 2 different ways of measuring a service relationship.

In this article, the author discusses the concepts of the psychological contract, functional motivation, and the five-factor model of personality and explains how these should relate to one another when anticipating volunteer preferences. Two studies are presented: In the first he applied the psychological contract and the volunteer functional inventory to a sample of volunteer firefighters; in the second he applied the psychological contract, the volunteer functional inventory, and the five-factor model of personality to a sample of students volunteering for various student and community groups. No relationships were foundinStudy1betweenfunctional motives and psychological contract type. In Study 2, the personality dimensions of agreeableness and emotional stability were found to relate to the relational psychological contract. Career motives, and the personality factor of conscientiousness, were related to transactional psychological contracts. The implications for these findings are discussed.

This study addresses the extension of research on paid employees to volunteer workers. Pearce (1978Pearce ( , 1993b

The heroism witnessed on September 11, 2001, caused Americans to reflect on publicservice workers~e.g., firefighters! in our communities and how these individuals often risk their lives for the safety of others on a daily basis. Although every call for service is not one of recovery from mass destruction, it remains that firefighters risk their lives Portions of this study were presented at the

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