Service staff attitudes, organisational practices and performance drivers

We provide conceptual and empirical insights elucidating how organisational practices influence service staff attitudes and behaviours and how the latter set affects organisational performance drivers. Our analyses suggest that service organisations can enhance their performance by putting in place strategies and practices that strengthen the service-oriented behaviours of their employees and reduce their intentions to leave the organisation. Improved performance is accomplished through both the delivery of high quality services (enhancing organisational effectiveness) and the maintenance of front-line staff (increasing organisational efficiency). Specifically, service-oriented business strategies in the form of organisational-level service orientation and practices in the form of training directly influence the manifest service-oriented behaviours of staff. Training also indirectly affects the intention of front-line staff to leave the organisation; it increases job satisfaction, which, in turn has an impact on affective commitment. Both affective and instrumental commitment were hypothesised to reduce the intentions of front-line staff to leave the organisation, however only affective commitment had a significant effect.

[1]  Jagdip Singh.  Performance Productivity and Quality of Frontline Employees in Service Organizations , 2000 .

[2]  John Hulland,et al.  Use of partial least squares (PLS) in strategic management research: a review of four recent studies , 1999 .

[3]  A. Parasuraman,et al.  SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality. , 1988 .

[4]  Gilbert A. Churchill,et al.  Marketing Research: Methodological Foundations , 1976 .

[5]  Edward G. Carmines,et al.  Reliability and Validity Assessment , 1979 .

[6]  E. Gummesson.  Marketing‐orientation Revisited: The Crucial Role of the Part‐time Marketer , 1991 .

[7]  Peter M. Hart,et al.  Teacher quality of work life: Integrating work experiences, psychological distress and morale , 1994 .

[8]  Peter W. Hom,et al.  SERV∗OR: A managerial measure of organizational service-orientation , 1998 .

[9]  James G. Maxham,et al.  Corridors of Influence in the Dissemination of Customer-Oriented Strategy to Customer Contact Service Employees , 2000 .

[10]  C. Rusbult,et al.  A Longitudinal Test of the Investment Model: The Impact on Job Satisfaction, Job Commitment, and Turnover of Variations in Rewards, Costs, Alternatives, and Investments , 1983 .

[11]  I. Ajzen.  The theory of planned behavior , 1991 .

[12]  Wynne W. Chin,et al.  The Effects of Group Attitudes Toward Alternative GDSS Designs on the Decision‐making Performance of Computer‐Supported Groups* , 1994 .

[13]  S. Bell,et al.  When customers disappoint: A model of relational internal marketing and customer complaints , 2004 .

[14]  Scott B. MacKenzie,et al.  Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. , 2003, The Journal of applied psychology.

[15]  John P. Meyer,et al.  The measurement and antecedents of affective, continuance and normative commitment to the organization , 1990 .

[16]  W. Sasser,et al.  The profitable art of service recovery. , 1990, Harvard business review.

[17]  Barry J. Babin,et al.  Employee Behavior in a Service Environment: A Model and Test of Potential Differences between Men and Women: , 1998 .

[18]  Mary Jo Bitner,et al.  Critical Service Encounters: The Employee's Viewpoint , 1994 .

[19]  D. Wakefield,et al.  On the Causal Ordering of Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment , 1986 .

[20]  Gregory T. Gundlach,et al.  The Structure of Commitment in Exchange , 1995 .

[21]  S. Hunt,et al.  The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing , 1994 .

[22]  I. G. Saura,et al.  Relationships among customer orientation, service orientation and job satisfaction in financial services , 2005 .

[23]  Clive Fletcher,et al.  Performance Management, Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment1 , 1996 .

[24]  Benjamin Schneider,et al.  Serving multiple masters: role conflict experienced by service employees , 2002 .

[25]  Barbara Wixom,et al.  An Empirical Investigation of the Factors Affecting Data Warehousing Success , 2001, MIS Q..

[26]  S. Kelley.  Developing Customer Orientation among Service Employees , 1992 .

[27]  Charles M. Futrell,et al.  Exploring salesperson turnover: A causal model , 1989 .

[28]  B. Schneider,et al.  Employee and customer perceptions of service in banks: Replication and extension. , 1985 .

[29]  Wayne D. Hoyer,et al.  Service Orientation of a Retailer's Business Strategy: Dimensions, Antecedents, and Performance Outcomes , 2002 .

[30]  Peter A. Dacin,et al.  Market Situation Interpretation and Response: The Role of Cognitive Style, Organizational Culture, and Information Use , 2003 .

[31]  P. Lok,et al.  The effect of organisational culture and leadership style on job satisfaction and organisational commitment: A cross‐national comparison , 2004 .

[32]  H. Harman.  Modern factor analysis , 1961 .

[33]  Carol C. Bienstock,et al.  Organizational citizenship behavior and service quality , 2003 .

[34]  John J. Sosik,et al.  Transformational Leadership in Work Groups , 2002 .

[35]  Stephen S. Tax,et al.  Recovering and Learning from Service Failure , 1998 .

[36]  S. Aryee,et al.  A Cross-Cultural Test of a Model of the Work-Family Interface , 1999 .

[37]  John J. Sosik,et al.  Effects of leadership style and anonymity on group potency and effectiveness in a group decision support system environment. , 1997 .

[38]  Willem Verbeke,et al.  Do Organizational Practices Matter in Role Stress Processes? A Study of Direct and Moderating Effects for Marketing-Oriented Boundary Spanners , 1996 .

[39]  Sung-Joon Yoon,et al.  Service Orientation: Its Impact on Business Performance in the Medical Service Industry , 2007 .

[40]  Robert G. Jones,et al.  Perceived purposes of performance appraisal: Correlates of individual‐ and position‐focused purposes on attitudinal outcomes , 2007 .

[41]  John E. Timmerman,et al.  Service orientation and performance: an organizational perspective , 2006 .

[42]  José Antonio Varela González,et al.  Structural relationships between organizational service orientation, contact employee job satisfaction and citizenship behavior , 2006 .

[43]  Yong-Ki Lee,et al.  Effect of service orientation on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intention of leaving in a casual dining chain restaurant , 2005 .