Suchergebnisse

This study investigates the interactive effect of job demands and resources in influencing the development of a frontline employee's customer-oriented attitude (COA) and deep versus surface acting behaviors. Results demonstrate that job resources, such as perceived organizational support and perceived customer participation, can positively influence an employee's COA, which subsequently promotes deep over surface acting behaviors. Such positive relationships, however, are significantly and adversely affected by a job demand, perceived crowding, and a job stressor, perceived job insecurity. Specifically, contextual demands weaken the positive influence of job resources upon the development of a COA, also weakening the positive influence of a COA upon deep acting while promoting the occurrence of surface acting. From a managerial perspective, such findings highlight the importance of understanding the potentially negative influence of a stressful, demanding work environment, even upon employees who possess a very positive attitude toward helping customers.

In this article, the authors examine the organizational factors contributing to the successful commingling of employee service and sales responsibilities at the point of customer contact. Findings indicate that the key to successful commingling is a balanced orientation among customer contact personnel where their service and sales roles are viewed as complementary rather than contradictory. To ensure this, the organizational environment must support both service and sales roles, or it might run the risk of encouraging the cross-selling of additional products without creating employee concern for delivering customer satisfaction. In addition, the performance of both service and sales roles in an environment that is not conducive to these roles appears to adversely affect contact employee levels of felt stress.

This study introduces customer-perceived service climate, which captures an individual customer's perception of the extent to which a service organization teaches, prioritizes, and recognizes outstanding customer service through organizational practices and procedures. Such a perception is found to significantly and positively influence the outcomes of a customer's already positive interactions with other customers as well as temper outcomes associated with a customer's negative experience of another customer's dysfunctional behaviors. Longitudinal results demonstrate that customer-perceived service climate creates a potential "spillover" effect, where positive influences of a strong service climate benefit an organization in two ways—both through employee actions (as previous research shows) and through customer actions toward one another (i.e., supportive behaviors—as the current study demonstrates). The development of such supportive behaviors among customers is shown to be critical, as it is these support behaviors from other customers, and not positive or negative customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions themselves, that ultimately influence a customer's judgment of organizational service quality. Service organizations should be aware of the importance of developing positive customer perceptions of service climate to help in positively influencing C2C interactions as well as focusing upon the development of a service environment that enables C2C support behaviors.

A frontline employee's motivational orientation toward the role s/he plays in an organization is an important determinant of the level of service that is ultimately provided to a customer. In this study, we propose and demonstrate that frontline employees possess two different forms of motivational orientation to frame their work in both positive (i.e., approach) and negative (i.e., avoidance) ways. We demonstrate that need satisfaction, or an employee's fulfilling needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, mediates the positive relationship between approach orientation and service performance, as well as the negative relationship between avoidance orientation and service performance. Further, such effects are influenced by both service climate and service climate strength. Our investigation relies on a mixed-method design that develops and uses measures for service climate and service climate strength at the team level (Study One), as well as within a scenario-based experiment to manipulate service climate and service climate strength (Study Two). Results of a meta-analysis are presented to highlight the gap in research related to understanding frontline employee motivational orientation and its influence upon service performance.

Passion is a motivational force driving people toward success and satisfaction. Outside of entrepreneurship, though, research on how passion may be activated within a work role has been limited. As frontline employees (FLEs) are a vital link between organizations and their customers, measuring passion in the FLE context is particularly relevant. Anyone who has enjoyed memorable service knows, it is through passionate FLEs that service organizations may stand out from competitors. Through a series of seven studies conducted across multiple countries, this research develops and validates a measure of FLE passion. FLE passion is the intense positive feelings and identity reinforcement resulting from solving problems and/or serving customers. The developed and validated measurement instrument is comprised of both serving and solving dimensions and includes evidence that FLEs negotiate their identities and activate positive affect during service encounters. Theory and results indicate that organizations may control certain antecedents to passion, and that passion is related, yet distinct, from such things as employee engagement and organizational commitment. A potential research agenda is presented based upon applying the FLE passion construct across various service domains.

Service captivity is a customer's perception of being constrained regarding choice, voice, and power during service provision. Customers in many contexts experience service captivity, and some do so daily. Service captivity experiences in extended and complex services are related to increased vulnerability, helplessness, and negative well-being. In more mundane services, it is associated with reduced fairness and quality perceptions, as well as heightened negative word-of-mouth and dissatisfaction. In short, customer and organizational outcomes are influenced by perceptions of service captivity. To better understand customers' experiences of service captivity and facilitate research on this phenomenon, the current research is the first to develop and validate a robust measure of service captivity, which it does across six studies. The resulting unidimensional scale, which captures the reflective latent construct of service captivity as a manifestation of limited choice, voice, and power, is helpful for research aimed at understanding customers' constrained service experiences and exploring the role of service captivity in service research models and service delivery outcomes.