CUSTOMER MISTREATMENT AND EMPLOYEE ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR: AN ATTRIBUTIONAL APPROACH

Jeongdoo Park

Because of frequent customer-employee interaction in the service industry, it is not uncommon for service employees to experience demanding and even aggressive customers. Increasing research attention has been given to how service employees react to such an unpleasant experience with customers. Previous research has focused on employees' emotional and behavioral reactions to customer mistreatment from a dyadic, employee-customer perspective. However, the service encounter is an important work and social context for service employees where they develop not only work identity, but also a social exchange relationship with their employers. That is, service employees may develop certain perceptions of and attitudes toward the self and the organization as a result of their experience with customers in the service encounter. This study investigated how customer mistreatment negatively affects employees' attitudes toward the self and their employers, and eventually behaviors in the workplace. Drawing on attribution theory, this dissertation proposed that customer mistreatment negatively impacts employee organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) through lowered organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and perceived organizational support (POS). Moreover, because people' perceived control over events significantly affects their interpretation of the events, it was hypothesized that the negative effects of customer mistreatment on OBSE, POS, and OCB are more pronounced among employees with an external locus of control and low job autonomy. Taken together, this dissertation proposed that the two interaction effects (customer mistreatment × locus of control and customer mistreatment × job autonomy) on OCB are mediated by OBSE and POS. The proposed relationships were examined in a multi-wave, multi-source study, which involves three phases of data collection, and both employee self-reporting and supervisor rating. Using survey data collected from 171 hotel frontline employees and their 37 direct supervisors, the research hypotheses were tested with multiple regression and bootstrap analyses. This study found that customer mistreatment was negatively associated with employees' OBSE and POS. The results also showed that OBSE and POS were the underlying psychological mechanisms through which customer mistreatment affected employee OCB. Furthermore, the negative effects of customer mistreatment on OBSE, POS, and OCB varied depending on employees' locus of control and perceived job autonomy. The negative relationship between customer mistreatment, and OBSE and OCB were stronger for externals than for internals. Customer mistreatment was also related more strongly to POS and OCB for employees with low job autonomy than for those with high job autonomy. The results of the mediated moderation analysis using Edwards and Lambert's approach indicated the indirect effects of customer mistreatment on OCB through OBSE and POS varied significantly depending on employees' locus of control and job autonomy. The findings of this study extends the literature on 1) consequences of customer mistreatment, 2) contextual factors affecting the relationships between customer mistreatment and its outcomes, and 3) mediational mechanisms through which customer mistreatment impacts employee behaviors in the organization.

CUSTOMER MISTREATMENT AND EMPLOYEE ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR: AN ATTRIBUTIONAL APPROACH

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