Daily Customer Mistreatment and Employee Sabotage Against Customers: Examining Emotion and Resource Perspectives
Academy of Management Journal, 2011
25 Pages Posted: 16 Jul 2015 Last revised: 18 Jul 2015
Date Written: April 1, 2011
Abstract
Taking emotion and resource perspectives, we examined the daily relationship between customers' mistreatment of employees and employee sabotage of customers, as well as employees' individual- and unit-level emotion-based and resource-based moderators for this relationship. Multilevel analyses of daily survey data from 131 call center employees showed that daily customer mistreatment significantly predicted customer-directed sabotage. In addition, supporting the emotion perspective, employees' negative affectivity exacerbated the effect of customer mistreatment on customer-directed sabotage, whereas employees' self-efficacy for emotional regulation weakened such effect. Further, supporting the resource perspective, job tenure and service rule commitment both weakened the effect of customer mistreatment.
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