Customer responses to employee deviance: A conservation of resources perspective

Abstract

This study aspires to examine how customers respond to two forms of frontline employee deviance (i. e., customer-oriented deviance, COD, and customeroriented misbehaviour, COM) during a specific service exchange. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, COD and COM are viewed as resources and demands of customer performance during their exchanges with employees. Five customer responses are examined, namely encounter satisfaction, and employee-oriented citizenship behaviour, customer dysfunctional intentions, customer citizenship behaviour towards the organisation, and brand advocacy. To gain insights into these issues, an experimental design is adopted, which manipulates the two forms of deviance along with two boundary conditions: the extent to which the problem the customer faces is severe (i. e., problem severity); and whether the outcome of the exchange with the employee is successful (i. e., exchange outcome). This study contributes to deviant employee literature by illustrating how different forms of deviance shape exchange-specific responses and reciprocal customer intentions directed at the organisation and the employee.