Feeling good working with you: Perspective-taking as a strategy to increase team member satisfaction

Abstract

To deal with evolving customer demands, employees in hospitality organizations are increasingly working in multiple teams (i.e., multiple team membership [MTM]), which can be stressful and demanding, thereby affecting important attitudes, such as team member satisfaction. Yet, little research has focused on understanding theory-based strategies that can enhance positive feelings toward their team members. Drawing from the egocentric bias theory and the positive-negative asymmetry effect, we advance a multilevel model focused on perspective-taking as an intervention to increase team member satisfaction via empathy. Using an experience sampling method approach, 650 daily observations from 65 hospitality interns working in multiple teams were collected over ten consecutive workdays. The results showed that engaging in perspective-taking led to increases in empathy toward team members over time, which led to increases in team member satisfaction. Emotional stability was a moderator that changed the effect of perspective-taking. The current paper offers theoretical and practical contributions.