Organizational justice and extrarole customer service: The mediating role of well-being at work

The purpose of this article is to propose and test a model of extrarole customer service (ERCS). We propose that organizational justice (distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational) promotes well-being at work (low burnout and high engagement). Well-being at work, in turn, engenders more effective ERCS. Thus, well-being at work is considered a mediator of the relationships from organizational justice to ERCS. This fully mediated model was compared to an alternative fully direct model. The sample consisted of 317 contact employees who were working in the Spanish service sector. The results of structural equation modelling supported the importance of the mediating role of the positive side of well-being at work (engagement) in the relationship between organizational justice and ERCS. The article concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications.

[1]  W. Schaufeli,et al.  Historical and Conceptual Development of Burnout , 1993 .

[2]  A. Bakker,et al.  Burnout and Engagement in University Students , 2002 .

[3]  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.

[4]  C. Maslach,et al.  The Truth about Burnout: How Organizations Cause Personal Stress and What to Do about It , 1997 .

[5]  Michael P. Leiter,et al.  AREAS OF WORKLIFE: A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO ORGANIZATIONAL PREDICTORS OF JOB BURNOUT , 2003 .

[6]  Robert H. Moorman,et al.  Relationship between organizational justice and organizational citizenship behaviors : do fairness perceptions influence employee citizenship ? , 1991 .

[7]  N. Kop,et al.  Burnout, job stress and violent behaviour among Dutch police officers , 1999 .

[8]  T. Judge,et al.  Organizational justice and stress: the mediating role of work-family conflict. , 2004, The Journal of applied psychology.

[9]  L. Skitka,et al.  Are Outcome Fairness and Outcome Favorability Distinguishable Psychological Constructs? A Meta-Analytic Review , 2003 .

[10]  H. Wilke,et al.  How do I judge my outcome when I do not know the outcome of others? The psychology of the fair process effect. , 1997, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[11]  Wilmar B. Schaufeli,et al.  Burnout and work engagement: Independent factors or opposite poles? , 2006 .

[12]  C. Brotheridge.  The Role of Fairness in Mediating the Effects of Voice and Justification on Stress and Other Outcomes in a Climate of Organizational Change. , 2003 .

[13]  C. Maslach.  Job Burnout , 2003 .

[14]  Daniel G. Bachrach,et al.  Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: A Critical Review of the Theoretical and Empirical Literature and Suggestions for Future Research , 2000 .

[15]  S S Masterson.  A trickle-down model of organizational justice: relating employees' and customers' perceptions of and reactions to fairness. , 2001, The Journal of applied psychology.

[16]  Lance A. Bettencourt,et al.  Contact employees: Relationships among workplace fairness, job satisfaction and prosocial service behaviors , 1997 .

[17]  D. Myers,et al.  Who Is Happy? , 1995 .

[18]  Stuart S. Nagel,et al.  Procedural Justice: A Psychological Analysis , 1976 .

[19]  D. E. Green,et al.  A Confirmation of the Three-Factor Structure of the Maslach Burnout Inventory , 1988 .

[20]  W. Schaufeli,et al.  Job burnout. , 2001, Annual review of psychology.

[21]  Jukka Lipponen,et al.  Moderating effects of job insecurity in the relationships between procedural justice and employee well-being: Gender differences , 2005 .

[22]  G. Leventhal,et al.  The Distribution of Rewards and Resources in Groups and Organizations , 1976 .

[23]  M. Kivimäki,et al.  Organisational justice and health of employees: prospective cohort study , 2003, Occupational and environmental medicine.

[24]  M. Leiter,et al.  The correspondence of patient satisfaction and nurse burnout. , 1998, Social science & medicine.

[25]  B. Buunk,et al.  Burnout and inequity among human service professionals: a longitudinal study. , 2001, Journal of occupational health psychology.

[26]  Zinta S. Byrne,et al.  The relationship of emotional exhaustion to work attitudes, job performance, and organizational citizenship behaviors. , 2003, The Journal of applied psychology.

[27]  D. Yagil,et al.  The relationship between empowerment, aggressive behaviours of customers, coping, and burnout , 2005 .

[28]  Douglas R. May,et al.  The psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability and the engagement of the human spirit at work , 2004 .

[29]  A. Shirom.  Vigor ’ s Construct Validity 1 Feeling Vigorous at Work ? The Construct of Vigor and the Study of Positive Affect in Organizations , 2003 .

[30]  S. Sonnentag,et al.  Job Performance , 2010 .

[31]  The Customer Is Not Always Right , 2007 .

[32]  Lois E. Tetrick,et al.  Handbook of occupational health psychology , 2003 .

[33]  James G. Maxham,et al.  Firms Reap what they Sow: The Effects of Shared Values and Perceived Organizational Justice on Customers’ Evaluations of Complaint Handling , 2003 .

[34]  Deborah E. Rupp,et al.  The mediating effects of social exchange relationships in predicting workplace outcomes from multifoci organizational justice , 2002 .

[35]  Kyle Lewis,et al.  Integrating Justice and Social Exchange: The Differing Effects of Fair Procedures and Treatment on Work Relationships , 2000 .

[36]  Donald E. Conlon,et al.  Justice at the millennium: a meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. , 2001, The Journal of applied psychology.

[37]  Alicia A. Grandey,et al.  The customer is not always right: customer aggression and emotion regulation of service employees , 2004 .

[38]  S. Jackson,et al.  The Measurement of experienced burnout , 1981 .

[39]  J. Thibaut,et al.  Procedural Justice: A Psychological Analysis , 1976 .

[40]  R. Cropanzano,et al.  The effect of organizational structure on perceptions of procedural fairness. , 2000, The Journal of applied psychology.

[41]  J. Colquitt.  Organizational Justice , 2008 .

[42]  L. V. Dyne,et al.  The employment relationships of foreign workers versus local employees: A field study of organizational justice, job satisfaction, performance, and OCB , 2003 .

[43]  C. Schriesheim.  Causal Analysis: Assumptions, Models, and Data , 1982 .

[44]  R. Bies.  Interactional justice : communication criteria of fairness , 1986 .

[45]  James K. Harter,et al.  Well-being in the workplace and its relationship to business outcomes: A review of the Gallup studies. , 2003 .

[46]  P. Bentler,et al.  Comparative fit indexes in structural models. , 1990, Psychological bulletin.

[47]  Paul E. Spector,et al.  The Role of Justice in Organizations: A Meta-Analysis , 2001 .

[48]  J. Greenberg,et al.  Organizational Justice: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow , 1990 .

[49]  A. Bakker,et al.  The Measurement of Engagement and Burnout: A Two Sample Confirmatory Factor Analytic Approach , 2002 .

[50]  C. Dormann,et al.  Job conditions and customer satisfaction , 2002 .

[51]  G. Leventhal.  What Should Be Done with Equity Theory , 1980 .

[52]  Deborah E. Rupp,et al.  Three roads to organizational justice , 2001 .

[53]  J. S. Adams,et al.  Inequity In Social Exchange , 1965 .

[54]  W. Schaufeli,et al.  Burnout among General Practitioners A Perspective from Equity Theory , 1994 .

[55]  M. Csíkszentmihályi,et al.  Positive psychology. An introduction. , 2000, The American psychologist.

[56]  J. Colquitt.  On the dimensionality of organizational justice: a construct validation of a measure. , 2001, The Journal of applied psychology.

[57]  T. A. Wright,et al.  The role of "happiness" in organizational research: Past, present and future directions. , 2004 .

[58]  Gary P. Latham,et al.  Increasing citizenship behavior within a labor union : A test of organizational justice theory , 1996 .

[59]  Douglas G. Bonett,et al.  The contribution of burnout to work performance. , 1997 .

[60]  M Kivimäki,et al.  Organization justice evaluations, job control, and occupational strain. , 2001, The Journal of applied psychology.

[61]  Arie Shirom,et al.  Job-related burnout: A review. , 2003 .

[62]  Wilmar B. Schaufeli,et al.  Teacher Burnout and Lack of Reciprocity1 , 1999 .

[63]  Benjamin Schneider,et al.  Understanding organization-customer links in service settings. , 2005 .