Negative Antecedents of Affective Commitment of Filipino Call Center Workers

Abstract

The study's primary purpose is to provide empirical information about the effects of perceived customer unfriendliness, emotional dissonance, and perceived stress on Filipino call center workers' affective organizational commitment. Also, the study aims to show how leader-member exchange (LMX) mediates the relationships between the three posited antecedents and affective commitment. The study proposed a hypothesized model based on insights from the literature. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used in testing the hypotheses using a dataset from a sample of 689 Filipino call center workers. The results revealed that emotional dissonance and perceived stress are consequences of perceived customer unfriendliness. They, in turn, have adverse effects on affective commitment. The results also indicated that LMX fully mediates the impact of perceived customer unfriendliness on affective commitment and partially mediates the stress-commitment relationship. The findings' discussion highlights the importance of stakeholders' intervention programs in reducing workers' emotional dissonance and perceived stress and implies that quality LMX initiated by the leaders may help reduce the adverse effects of customer-related stressors and psychological strains on the affective commitment of the call center workers.