I do not want to smile! A response to customer mistreatment

Abstract

Building upon social exchange theory and personality models, this study aimed to examine why and to what extent experiencing customer incivility leads employees to engage in emotional deviance. More precisely, we argued that negative emotions would act as a mediator in this relationship and that employees’ resilience would moderate this mediation. A total of 419 frontline employees participated in this study. Using the latent moderated structural equations method, this research showed that negative emotions mediated the relationship between customer incivility and emotional deviance. Moreover, as expected, employees’ resilience moderated the indirect effect of customer incivility on emotional deviance through negative emotions. More specifically, the indirect effect emerged as weaker for resilient as compared to non-resilient individuals. Overall, this study offers several practical implications for managers and organizations. Specifically, it proposes that managers and organizations should offer training programs to improve stress management and emotion regulation, such as relaxation, mindfulness techniques, and resilience-building programs.