Emerald Management Review:
Getting even for customer mistreatment: The role of moral identity in the relationship between customer interpersonal injustice and employee sabotage

Abstract:

Purpose - To identify those factors that cause employees to engage in acts of sabotage against customers, investigates the link between employee sabotage and individual performance.

Design/methodology/approach - Explores those factors that cause employees to engage in detrimental acts of sabotage; undertakes to: (1) investigate the relationship between perceived mistreatment by customers and employee sabotage; (2) test whether moral identity moderates the relationship between customer mistreatment and sabotage and (3) to explore the relationship between customer-directed sabotage and employee performance. Provides a relevant literature review; outlines a number of hypotheses; describes how these were tested in a field study of customer service representations employed in a Canadian call centre.

Findings - Highlights how employees were found to retaliate in unauthorised ways towards customers who they regarded as having mistreated them and that this was over and above their fairness perceptions of the company. Reveals how while symbolization increases the chances of employees engaging in sabotage, internalisation suppresses these tendencies.

Research limitations/implications - Identifies study limitations; looks at how age impacts on sabotage behaviour; examine the relationship between employee poor performance and customer mistreatment.

Originality/value - First study to examine how customer service employees 'get back' at customers for their mistreatment.

Keywords:

Article Type:

Research paper

Reference:

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