Customer injustice and service employees' customer‐oriented citizenship behavior: A social exchange perspective

Abstract

SummaryRecent research has uncovered the debilitating effects that customers' unfair treatment of service workers has for both employees and their employers. These studies have largely explained the effects of customer mistreatment through a conservation of resources (COR) theory lens, arguing that customer injustice depletes the regulatory resources of service employees, thereby impairing their well‐being and ability to perform their jobs effectively. In our paper, we contend that aspects of employee–customer social exchange should also be considered, and that such relational processes are critical above and beyond COR effects. After formulating our theoretical model, we offer time‐lagged data from a field study of service workers (N = 337) supporting our hypothesis that the negative relationship between customer injustice and employee citizenship behavior directed toward customers is sequentially mediated by perceived customer support and customer commitment, respectively, over and above COR effects. Incorporating insights from the customer service literature, we further demonstrate the role of display rule perceptions as a moderator of these sequential indirect effects.