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Beyond tit-for-tat: Theorizing divergent employee reactions to customer mistreatment
Amarnani, Rajiv Bordia, Prashant Restubog, Simon Lloyd D.
Amarnani, Rajiv
Bordia, Prashant
Restubog, Simon Lloyd D.
Abstract
Customer mistreatment is a ubiquitous and pernicious form of interpersonal mistreatment leveled by customers against employees. Service workers’ reactions to customer mistreatment have been traditionally viewed as tit-for-tat reactions in which service workers respond to customers’ aggression with retaliation in kind. However, this tit-for-tat account does not capture the broad range of possible service worker responses to customer misbehavior. We build the case for self-esteem threat as an overarching framework for divergent employee reactions to customer mistreatment, and explain how service workers’ behavioral reactions and emotional labor may systematically vary according to where service workers stake their self-esteem—in performance, in others’ approval, or in status—using contingencies of self-worth theory. Other features of the self-concept are identified as boundary conditions of the process.
Keywords
customer mistreatment, contingencies of self-worth, incivility, self-concept, self-esteem threat, service work
Date
2019
Type
Journal article
Journal
Group and Organization Management
Book
Volume
44
Issue
4
Page Range
687-717
Article Number
ACU Department
Collections
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
File Access
Controlled