Service Employees’ Reactions to Mistreatment by Customers: A Comparison Between North America and East Asia

Abstract

The authors proposed that customer service employees’ reactions to mistreatment by customers can vary between North American and East Asian employees due to differences in their cultural values. Customer mistreatment was predicted to be associated with direct, active, and target‐specific reactions (i.e., sabotage directed toward the source of mistreatment) more so among North American employees as compared to East Asian employees. In contrast, customer mistreatment was predicted to relate to more indirect, passive, and target‐general reactions (i.e., withdraw organizational citizenship behavior directed toward customers in general) among employees in East Asia as compared to employees in North America. A field study of customer service employees (N = 213) working in the same hotel chain in China and Canada found support for these predictions. Mediation analyses showed that individualism and collectivism accounted for these differences. Theoretical and practical implications are provided, and future directions are discussed.

Customer Mistreatment: A Review of Conceptualizations and a Multilevel Theoretical Model

“…Consistent with previous empirical studies documenting the effects of resource depletion, customer mistreatment has been linked with employee sabotage (Shao & Skarlicki, 2014;Wang et al, 2011), incivility toward customers, job demands (van Jaarsveld, Walker, & Skarlicki, 2010), withdrawal (e.g., absences, Grandey et al, 2004), reduced performance (e.g., Sliter, Sliter, & Jex, 2012), and burnout (e.g., Ben-Zur & Yagil, 2005;Dormann & Zapf, 2004;Grandey et al, 2007;Greenbaum, Quade, Mawritz, Kim, & Crosby, 2014). For example, Wang et al (2011), using a sample of call center employees, reported that customer mistreatment was positively related to employee sabotage and this positive association was mitigated by job tenure (i.e., cognitive resource) and service rule commitment (i.e., motivational resource).…”

“…In addition, customer mistreatment may also reduce the extent to which service employees help out their coworkers or organization because it results in unfavorable job attitudes, which are one driver of citizenship behavior (e.g., Bateman & Organ, 1983). Unfortunately, previous studies have focused on customer mistreatment's relationship with citizenship behaviors directed at customers but not at coworkers or the organization (e.g., Shao & Skarlicki, 2014). However, indirect evidence suggests that customer mistreatment is negatively associated with organizational and interpersonal citizenship behaviors.…”

“…Additionally, using a sample of Canadian call center employees providing service in several different areas (e.g., parcel delivery, credit cards) and controlling for internal sources (i.e., supervisors, coworkers) of interpersonal justice, Skarlicki et al (2008) found that employees who more commonly experienced customer interpersonal injustice were more likely to have sabotaged customer phone calls. Furthermore, Shao and Skarlicki (2014) conducted a field study of Chinese and Canadian hotel employees, finding that customer mistreatment elicited customer-directed sabotage behaviors. However, Canadian employees were more likely to respond with sabotage than Chinese employees.…”

A Conceptual Framework of Happiness at the Workplace

“…Eastern cultural values are emphasized on collectivism (Shao & Skarlicki, 2014). In collectivistic societies, group goals are more important than personal goals (Zhang, Van Doorn, & Leeflang, 2014).…”

Effect of employee incivility on customer retaliation through psychological contract breach: The moderating role of moral identity

“…Building upon these scholarly works, we posit that psychological contract breach is important for understanding customer reaction to service failure. Shao and Skarlicki (2014), however, suggest that individuals vary in their propensity to take revenge (Shao and Skarlicki, 2014). Such variation could be caused by individual differences such as http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2015.07.011 0278-4319/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.…”