Employee Behavior in a Service Environment: A Model and Test of Potential Differences between Men and Women

Abstract

The authors examine the attitudes and behaviors of employees who provide frontline service and address the extent to which relationships vary among male and female employees. The overall model predicts effects of role stress and work/nonwork conflict on customer-contact employees’ job performance, job and life satisfaction, and quitting intent. Results of structural equations modeling suggest an important role for work/nonwork conflict overall as well as two areas of interesting variation across gender. Specifically, multisample structural equations analyses suggest that role stress affects female service providers’ job performance more negatively than it does males’, and that job satisfaction is related more highly to quitting intent among males. Overall, results suggest interesting similarities and differences across gender.

Role stress and entrepreneurship research

“…Bagozzi (1980) found that job performance influenced job satisfaction, which has been empirically supported in other studies (e.g., Behrman & Perrault, 1984;Dubinsky & Hartley, 1986;Lusch & Serpkenci, 1990;Singh, 1993). Babin and Boles (1998) argued that the relationship between job performance and job satisfaction has been positive but modest in empirical studies. Bagozzi (1978Bagozzi ( , 1980 has studied the relationship between performance and satisfaction the most extensively.…”

“…The rationale is that a common response to increased role stress has shown to be withdrawal from the organization. This response, however, results from low job satisfaction rather than directly from high role stress (Ashforth & Saks, 1996;Babin & Boles, 1998;Baroudi, 1985). The majority of studies (e.g., Kemery, Mossholder, & Bedeian, 1987) indicate that "withdrawal" is a natural reaction to low job satisfaction caused by high role stress.…”

“…In the role stress literature, different performance constructs have been widely used and associated with role stress (Ashforth & Saks, 1996;Babin & Boles, 1998;Behrman & Perrault, 1984;Dubinsky, Michaels, Kotabe, Un Lim, & Moon, 1992). Job performance is one of them and is often viewed as the degree to which employees execute their job tasks, responsibilities, and assignments adequately (Dubinsky et al, 1992).…”

“…Work-family (or work-home) conflict is used as another common outcome of role stress (Babin & Boles, 1998;Bacharach, Bamberger, & Conley, 1991). Several researchers have found conflicts between work and home roles heightened for employees working long or inflexible hours (Burke, Weir, & Duwors, 1980;Fogarty, Rapoport, & Rapoport, 1978;Pleck, Staines, & Lang, 1980), a situation that can be recognized for many entrepreneurs and that has received especial support among female entrepreneurs (Shelton, 2006).…”

Does Networking with Colleagues Matter in Enhancing Job Performance?

“…The dependent variable, perceived job performance, was adopted from Babin and Boles (1998). It consisted of 7 self-reported items on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from "1" for strongly disagree to "7" for strongly disagree.…”