Why do frontline employees speak up on behalf of customers? The influence of supervisors versus coworkers and the role of intrapersonal factors

Abstract

Customer-Focused Voice (CFV) – an employees' discretionary expression of constructive ideas that challenge the status quo with the aim to benefit the customer - has been shown to improve service effectiveness. While the importance of supervisors in promoting employee voice is widely acknowledged in the literature, the relative impact of coworkers on voice behaviors is still unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we propose that supervisor support, coworker relationship quality, and intrapersonal employee factors combine to influence the extent to which frontline employees engage in CFV and the role that CFV plays on performance outcomes. The results reveal that supervisors and coworkers influence CFV through their effect on psychological safety, and these indirect effects are significant at higher levels of perspective taking self-efficacy. Perspective taking self-efficacy acts, as well, as a critical moderator to determine the extent to which psychological safety impacts in-role and customer-oriented performance.