Do employees' feelings really matter in service‐quality management?

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between: two extreme points of discrete types of emotions (“joy” and “frustration”); two types of managerial practices (“reward” and “empowerment”); and employee‐perceived service quality.

Design/methodology/approach

A conceptual model of the aforementioned relationships has been presented, along with hypotheses on these relationships and collected data with a survey study frontline employees in service organizations. This paper has analyzed the data in order to test the hypotheses.

Findings

The findings indicate that employees' feelings of joy and frustration explain more of the variance in employee‐perceived service quality than managerial practices, i.e. “reward” and “empowerment.” Specifically, employees' feelings of frustration are found to be detrimental for employee‐perceived service quality.

Research limitations/implications

This paper limits its focus to two types of managerial practices and two distinct feelings.

Practical implications

The paper has demonstrated the importance for managers to consider how their practices influence the service quality that their employees provide to customers. In particular, managers should be aware of employee's feeling of joy or frustration because of its role in explaining employee‐perceived service quality.

Originality/value

The paper has developed and tested an original conceptual model of a relatively unexplored area of services management.

Citation

Slåtten, T. (2010), "Do employees' feelings really matter in service‐quality management?", European Business Review, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 318-338. https://doi.org/10.1108/09555341011041001