The impacts of organizational support and customer incivility on employee vulnerability and job performance: The moderating role of employee mental health

Abstract

While customers are increasingly uncivil in the workplace, many hospitality firms continue to have customer centric policies that can negatively impact employees without considering the employee’s mental health. To address these important issues, this research uses a 2 × 2×2 between subjects experimental design: organizational support (employee-oriented vs. customer-oriented) x two customer incivility (civil vs. uncivil) x two mental health (strong vs. weak). Results find that uncivil customers and customer-focused firm policies negatively employee’s capacity to satisfy customers and perform their job. Furthermore, employees with less healthy mental health are more affected by uncivil customers and customer-focused organizational support. This study broadens the hospitality literature by incorporating the role of employee mental health and organizational support when it comes to dealing with customer incivility. In addition, the findings address the benefit to hospitality firms by raising awareness of the benefits of maintaining employee’s good mental health and sharing best practices firms can adopt.