Linking service climate and customer perceptions of service quality: Tests of a causal model.

A set of foundation issues that support employee work and service quality is conceptualized as a necessary but not sufficient cause of a climate for service, which in turn is proposed to be reflected in customer experiences. Climate for service rests on the foundation issues, but in addition it requires policies and practices that focus attention directly on service quality. Data were collected at multiple points in time from employees and customers of 134 branches of a bank and analyzed via structural equation modeling. Results indicated that the model in which the foundation issues yielded a climate for service, and climate for service in turn led to customer perceptions of service quality, fit the data well. However, subsequent cross-lagged analyses revealed the presence of a reciprocal effect for climate and customer perceptions. Implications of these results for theory and research are offered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Linking service climate and customer perceptions of service quality: test of a causal model

A set of foundation issues that support employee work and service quality is conceptualized as a necessary but not sufficient cause of a climate for service, which in turn is proposed to be reflected in customer experiences. Climate for service rests on the foundation issues, but in addition it requires policies and practices that focus attention directly on service quality. Data were collected at multiple points in time from employees and customers of 134 branches of a bank and analyzed via structural equation modeling. Results indicated that the model in which the foundation issues yielded a climate for service, and climate for service in turn led to customer perceptions of service quality, fit the data well. However, subsequent cross-lagged analyses revealed the presence of a reciprocal effect for climate and customer perceptions. Implications of these results for theory and research are offered.     

Customer service providers' attitudes relating to customer service and customer satisfaction in the customer-server exchange.

The authors proposed and tested a model describing the relationship between customer service providers' perceptions and attitudes toward their service-related duties and their customers' perceptions of satisfaction with their service experiences. Results indicated that the perception of having standards for service delivery in an organization is strongly related to line-level employees' perceptions of support from coworkers and supervisors. Perceived support from coworker, was significantly related to service providers' customer orientation, whereas perceived support from supervisors showed a weaker relationship to a customer orientation. Ultimately, service providers' customer orientation was strongly related to customers' satisfaction with service. Finally, a set of post hoc analyses indicated that coworker and supervisory support explained a greater proportion of incremental variance in the model than did perceived organizational support alone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How does service workers’ behavior affect their health? Service climate as a moderator in the service behavior–health relationships.

To address the question of whether providing high-quality service deteriorates or benefits workers’ health, a contingency model was tested that focused on service climate as a moderator. This interacts with service behavior to affect workers’ perceptions of emotional exhaustion, hence their physical and mental health. Findings of this study with 328 nurses from 66 nursing units indicated that congruent conditions of service climate and behaviors benefited workers’ health, whereas incongruent conditions affected it adversely. The findings are discussed in light of stress, and emotion–work perspectives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Service employees give as they get: Internal service as a moderator of the service climate–service outcomes link.

We lend theoretical insight to the service climate literature by exploring the joint effects of branch service climate and the internal service provided to the branch (the service received from corporate units to support external service delivery) on customer-rated service quality. We hypothesized that service climate is related to service quality most strongly when the internal service quality received is high, providing front-line employees with the capability to deliver what the service climate motivates them to do. We studied 619 employees and 1,973 customers in 36 retail branches of a bank. We aggregated employee perceptions of the internal service quality received from corporate units and the local service climate and external customer perceptions of service quality to the branch level of analysis. Findings were consistent with the hypothesis that high-quality internal service is necessary for branch service climate to yield superior external customer service quality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motivation in Unionized Construction

A survey was corrducted of unionized construction workers in a major midwestern city to collect data on their perceptions of the motivational climate in their jobs. The framework for the collection and analysis of the data was the expectancy model of worker motivation and performance. The findings indicated that the motivational climate is very poor. Contractors rely more on punishment and discipline than they do positive rewards. Little is done to encourage good performance. Discipline is used to discourage poor performance. Contractors provide little in the way of rewards, even when they are not prohibited from providing a variety of rewards by their labor agreements. The workers surveyed reported very little incentive to be highly productive.     

Manager personality, manager service quality orientation, and service climate: Test of a model.

This article conceptually and empirically explores the relationships among manager personality, manager service quality orientation, and climate for customer service. Data were collected from 1,486 employees and 145 managers in grocery store departments (N = 145) to test the authors' theoretical model. Largely consistent with hypotheses, results revealed that core self-evaluations were positively related to managers' service quality orientation, even after dimensions of the Big Five model of personality were controlled, and that service quality orientation fully mediated the relationship between personality and global service climate. Implications for personality and organizational climate research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Employee and customer perceptions of service in banks: Replication and extension.

Replicated the 1st author and J. J. Parkington's (1979) research on the relationships between employees and customers in service organizations by analyzing survey data from 142 employees and 968 customers from 28 branches of a bank. Moderate support was found for the 1st author and Parkington's work on correlates of stress for boundary role employees. Support was also found for relationships between branch employees' and branch customers' service perceptions and attitudes as reported by the present 1st author et al (1980). Significant relationships were reported between branch employees' perceptions of organizational human resources practices and branch customers' attitudes about service. Employee attitudes and customer attitudes were related to their own and one another's turnover intentions. Results are discussed from the perspective of promoting an integration of consumer and organizational behavior in the service sector. (51 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Private and public sector managers: An empirical investigation of job characteristics and organizational climate.

Compared the perceptions and satisfaction of 120 top managers from the private sector and 120 from the public sector in Israeli organizations. All Ss (median age 44 yrs) completed a job characteristics questionnaire and an organizational climate questionnaire. It was hypothesized that performance-based rewards and policies that promote efficiency would be significantly more prevalent in private-sector organizations and that higher levels of satisfaction would be expressed by managers in the private sector. Two-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs), consisting of private vs public and production vs service organizations, were performed. Results show significant main effects for sector of ownership and provide strong support for the hypotheses. Interaction effects in specific scales were also in the hypothesized direction, revealing that the private-sector/public-sector differences were further amplified in service organizations. The relation of the present findings to those of comparable studies in the US is discussed. (56 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unit-level voluntary turnover rates and customer service quality: Implications of group cohesiveness, newcomer concentration, and size.

Despite substantial growth in the service industry and emerging work on turnover consequences, little research examines how unit-level turnover rates affect essential customer-related outcomes. The authors propose an operational disruption framework to explain why voluntary turnover impairs customers’ service quality perceptions. On the basis of a sample of 75 work units and data from 5,631 employee surveys, 59,602 customer surveys, and organizational records, results indicate that unit-level voluntary turnover rates are negatively related to service quality perceptions. The authors also examine potential boundary conditions related to the disruption framework. Of 3 moderators studied (group cohesiveness, group size, and newcomer concentration), results show that turnover’s negative effects on service quality are more pronounced in larger units and in those with a greater concentration of newcomers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organizational climate configurations: Relationships to collective attitudes, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.

Research on organizational climate has tended to focus on independent dimensions of climate rather than studying the total social context as configurations of multiple climate dimensions. The authors examined relationships between configurations of unit-level climate dimensions and organizational outcomes. Three profile characteristics represented climate configurations: (1) elevation, or the mean score across climate dimensions; (2) variability, or the extent to which scores across dimensions vary; and (3) shape, or the pattern of the dimensions. Across 2 studies (1,120 employees in 120 bank branches and 4,317 employees in 86 food distribution stores), results indicated that elevation was related to collective employee attitudes and service perceptions, while shape was related to customer satisfaction and financial performance. With respect to profile variability, results were mixed. The discussion focuses on future directions for taking a configural approach to organizational climate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transforming service employees and climate: A multilevel, multisource examination of transformational leadership in building long-term service relationships.

This longitudinal field study integrates the theories of transformational leadership (TFL) and relationship marketing to examine how TFL influences employee service performance and customer relationship outcomes by transforming both (at the micro level) the service employees' attitudes and (at the macro level) the work unit's service climate. Results revealed that, at the individual level, managers' TFL was positively related to employee service performance, which, in turn, positively predicted customers' expressed intention to maintain a long-term service relationship with the service employee and manager-reported number of the employee's long-term customers measured 9 months later. In addition, the relationship between TFL and employee service performance was partially mediated by employee self-efficacy. Furthermore, store-level TFL was positively associated with store-level service climate, and service climate further enhanced the relationship between individual-level TFL and employee service performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contextualizing emotional exhaustion and positive emotional display: The signaling effects of supervisors’ emotional exhaustion and service climate.

In this study, we investigated how supervisors’ emotional exhaustion and service climate jointly influence the relationship between subordinates’ emotional exhaustion and their display of positive emotions at work. Using data from frontline sales employees and their immediate supervisors in a fashion retailer, we hypothesized and found that under the condition of a less positive service climate, subordinates’ emotional exhaustion was more negatively related to their positive emotional display when supervisors’ emotional exhaustion was higher rather than lower; this interaction effect of subordinates’ and supervisors’ emotional exhaustion was not significant in a more positive service climate. These results suggest that service climate and supervisors’ emotional exhaustion provide emotionally exhausted employees with important information cues about the possible availability of compensatory resources they need to uphold their efforts to display service-focused emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Climate strength: a new direction for climate research.

Climate strength was conceptualized within D. Chan's (1998) discussion of compositional models and the concept of culture strength from the organizational culture literature. Climate strength was operationalized in terms of within-group variability in climate perceptions--the less within-group variability, the stronger the climate. The authors studied climate strength in the context of research linking employee service climate perceptions to customer satisfaction. The hypothesis was tested that climate strength moderates the relationship between employee perceptions of service climate and customer satisfaction experiences. Partial support for the hypothesis was reported in both a concurrent and predictive (3-year) test across 118 branches of a bank. In the predictive study only the interaction of climate and climate strength predicted customer satisfaction. Implications for future research on climate and climate strength are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The perception of organizational climate: The customer's view.

Conducted a study with 674 present and 87 former bank-account holders in which climate was defined as the summary perception that bank customers have of their bank, and perceived climate was conceptualized as an intervening variable (i.e., a summary perception based on specific service-related events but preceding customer account switching). Questionnaire data indicate that (a) present-customer intentions to switch accounts were more strongly related to summary perceptions than to specific service-related event perceptions of the bank and (b) former customers had significantly more negative perceptions of the bank and its employees than did present customers. Implications for future organizational climate research and for the relationship between employee and customer are discussed. (20 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Three approaches to counselor-free career exploration among college women.

Compared the effects of 3 counselor-free career exploration treatments, the interpretive format of the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII), the Self-Directed Search (SDS), and the Vocational Card Sort (VCS), using 140 undergraduate women. One significant group effect was found, indicating that the SDS and VCS Holland themes were more closely related to the expressed choices of Ss than were the SCII themes. A comparison of the number of significant pretest/posttest and interaction effects suggests that reactivity is a potential issue of concern and that overall, few treatment differences exist. The significant effects found tentatively suggest that the general occupational themes of the SCII may cause some confusion in Ss seeking confirmation of their expressed choices. No significant differences were found between the groups on the Ss' perceptions of sex bias in the instruments. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organizational change in a human service agency.

An organizational change consultation was conducted with a large nonprofit human service organization. The consultation began with negotiations to gain entry to the agency followed by start-up activities at all levels of the organization. Seventy-two individual interviews were conducted. Interviews surfaced issues and concerns related to the climate, management, and operations of the agency and its eight programs. The mirroring (feedback) activity brought attention to the most critical issues in the organization for which action plans were developed and implemented. Employee follow-up survey results indicate favorable ratings for most action items. Lessons learned in the SHARE (pseudonym) consultation are presented for consideration by consultants working in human service and other organization settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expectations and preferences of nonclients for a university student counseling service.

Investigated the relationship between preferences and expectations about a university student counseling sevice in a population of 100 student nonclients. In addition, differences between nonclients' self-perceptions and their perceptions of counseling-service clients were investigated. Nonclients were administered a 157-item questionnaire on an individual basis to investigate these variables. It was hypothesized that discrepancies between preferences and expectations, as well as between perceptions of self and of clients, might be indicative of nonclients' willingness to become future clients of the counseling service. Results indicate that nonclients wanted the counselor to be significantly more active than they expected him to be. In addition, they perceived clients of the service as suffering significantly more from psychological and interpersonal problems than they themselves were. In light of the findings, it is suggested that there is a need for dissemination of information with regard to the process and modes of treatment offered by the counseling service. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The link between parents' perceptions of the school and their responses to school bullying: Variation by child characteristics and the forms of victimization.

A growing number of researchers encourage parents to notify the school when their children are bullied and work collaboratively with the school to resolve the situation. However, there is limited research on factors that are associated with parents' responses to their child's victimization. Using data from an online survey of 773 parents of victimized students enrolled in 93 schools (elementary, middle, and high), the current study employed structural equation modeling to examine the association between parents' perceptions of the school's climate and parents' responses to their child's victimization. The results indicated that the more favorable parents' perceptions of the climate were, the less likely they were to contact their child's school or talk to their child in response to the victimization. The parents' perception of the climate and response choice also varied as a function of the child's age and the form of bullying experienced. These findings suggest that parents' perceptions of the school are associated with their responses to their child's victimization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Internal medicine residents' perceptions of the balance between service and education in their night-call activities

PURPOSE: To quantify the workload of residents on night call and to determine the residents' perceptions of the balance between service and education in their night-call activities. METHOD: Twenty-two internal medicine residents--nine first-year residents and 13 senior residents (i.e., in their second, third, or fourth year)--kept logs of their night-call activities for two periods of 16 days each in 1991-92, at a 772-bed teaching hospital affiliated with Wright State University School of Medicine. The residents used the following five-point scale to rate each activity: 1, strictly service; 3, even balance; 5, strictly education. They also recorded the total times spent on various activities. Data were analyzed by using the independent and paired t-tests. RESULTS: Ninety-eight percent of the logs were returned. The first-year and senior residents did not differ significantly in times spent on logged events. Both the first-year and the senior residents perceived many night-call activities to be weighted toward education, especially those involving evaluation of acutely ill patients being considered for hospital admission (overall mean rating of 3.3). There was no striking difference between the first-year and senior residents' perceptions of the balance between service and education in their activities. CONCLUSION: The residents' perceptions of the relationship between service and education indicate that there was an even balance between the two. The educational aspects of night-call duties can and should remain an integral part of residents' training.