The Impact of Customer Mistreatment on Employee Displaced Aggression: The Moderating Effect of Interpersonal Sensitivity and Moral Identity.

Fang Liu,Yu Liu,Gang Chen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.550978

Abstract

Although customer mistreatment produces harmful consequences for employees and organizations, our understanding of the boundary conditions of customer mistreatment has largely been neglected. This study examines whether and when customer mistreatment influences employee displaced aggression toward coworkers by demonstrating interpersonal sensitivity and moral identity traits as two critical boundary conditions. Through the analysis of 623 employees’ questionnaire data, the results showed that customer mistreatment was positively related to employee displaced aggression toward coworkers. Furthermore, interpersonal sensitivity exacerbates the effect of customer mistreatment on displaced aggressive behaviors, while moral identity buffering the effect.

Highlights

Many service-oriented enterprises believe that “Customer is God.” With the hope to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the service concept of “customer first,” employees are required by enterprises to maintain humble attitudes and behaviors in the process of service interaction with customers (Yagil, 2008), which put buyers and sellers in an unequal position, and to some extent, encourage the emergence and development of customer mistreatment
We found that the first factor explained only 23.297% of the variance without rotation, and that both the dependent and independent variables were loaded on different factors
Based on the conservation of resources (CORs) theory and social cognitive theory (SCT), this study explores the relationship between customer mistreatment and employee displaced aggression toward colleagues, as well as the moderating effect of interpersonal sensitivity and moral identity on the above relationship

Summary

Introduction

Many service-oriented enterprises believe that “Customer is God.” With the hope to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the service concept of “customer first,” employees are required by enterprises to maintain humble attitudes and behaviors in the process of service interaction with customers (Yagil, 2008), which put buyers and sellers in an unequal position, and to some extent, encourage the emergence and development of customer mistreatment. With the hope to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the service concept of “customer first,” employees are required by enterprises to maintain humble attitudes and behaviors in the process of service interaction with customers (Yagil, 2008), which put buyers and sellers in an unequal position, and to some extent, encourage the emergence and development of customer mistreatment. Studies have shown that in the process of service consumption, it is not rare for customers to be overly self-centered, belittle the identity of employees, as well as verbally abuse and excessively demand employees (Grandey et al, 2004). Such kinds of customer mistreatment toward employees have been ignored in the process of enterprises pursuing the maximization of customer satisfaction. Based on the conservation of resources (CORs) theory, as a stressor in employees’ working environment, customer mistreatment often consumes a large amount of psychological resources of employees, causing psychological pressure, negative emotions, and emotional exhaustion, impairing employee well-being (Sommovigo et al, 2019b), as well as

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