Abstract
This study contributes to the constantly accumulating evidence on the effects of customer incivility (CI) on service employee exhaustion. Previous research has demonstrated that surface acting (SA) acts as a mediating variable in the relationship between CI and exhaustion. This study extended prior findings in two ways. The results of Study 1 (315 retail sales employees, 62.2% female) demonstrated that SA mediates the positive relationship between CI and exhaustion while controlling for employees’ trait positive and negative affectivity (NA). The results of Study 2 (292 customer service representatives, 51% female) supported a moderated mediation model demonstrating that trait emotional intelligence (EI) buffers the direct and indirect (through SA) effects of CI on exhaustion. Specifically, it was found that employees exposed to many uncivil customer behaviors but high in trait EI reported using less SA and, thus, experienced fewer exhaustion symptoms than their low in trait EI counterparts. These results highlight EI as an important personal resource that mitigates the adverse effects of CI on service employees’ exhaustion, and suggest that organizations should consider implementing EI training programmes for their frontline service employees.
Highlights
It has been widely recognized that exposure to stressful working conditions can lead to a variety of negative consequences, such as psychological distress, physical illness and mental disorders (American Psychological Association, 2018)
We focus on emotional intelligence (EI), an individual resource that is relevant to the issues addressed here and that has drawn much scientific attention in organizational settings over the past decades (Côté, 2005; Dahling and Johnson, 2013; Lopes, 2016)
This study was designed to examine the effects of emotional demands in service work, namely uncivil customer behaviors and surface acting (SA) on employee exhaustion
Summary
It has been widely recognized that exposure to stressful working conditions can lead to a variety of negative consequences, such as psychological distress, physical illness and mental disorders (American Psychological Association, 2018). The majority of research on burnout has been conducted among service sector workers who, due to the interpersonal nature of their work, have been described as being susceptible to burnout (Maslach et al, 2001). Another reason for the interest in burnout among service workers is that, in most economically advanced countries, service workers are the Customer Incivility and Burnout largest occupational group (Wirtz et al, 2015). The rapidly growing number of service workers in Poland indicates the need for research on the determinants of job burnout in this occupational group
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