Coping with customer mistreatment: Joining job routinization and proactive personality
Journal of Managerial Psychology
ISSN: 0268-3946
Article publication date: 4 October 2019
Issue publication date: 23 October 2019
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on the transaction theory of stress, the purpose of this paper is to conceptualize customer mistreatment as a stressor and examine how job routinization and proactive personality help employees cope with the effects of customer mistreatment on emotional exhaustion and work engagement. The interaction of job routinization and proactive personality was also tested.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 128 hundred nurses were recruited to participate in the current study, which was a daily survey for two consecutive weeks (10 working days).
Findings
The results revealed that job routinization and proactive personality attenuated the effects of customer mistreatment on emotional exhaustion and work engagement. The analyses also showed that, with more proactive personality and high job routinization, the effects of customer mistreatment were minimized.
Originality/value
Job routinization is a type of job resources that attenuates the negative influence of customer mistreatment. Proactive personality strengthens job routinization’s function, when proactive personality and job routinization are both high, the ill effect of customer mistreatment will be minimized.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The first two authors contributed equally to this project. This research was supported in part by Lingnan (University) College and China Institute of Economic Transformation and Opening, Sun Yat-Sen University.
Citation
Wu, H., Wang, X. and Chen, P. (2019), "Coping with customer mistreatment: Joining job routinization and proactive personality", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 34 No. 8, pp. 519-532. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMP-10-2018-0473
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited