Effect of commitment, job involvement and teams on customer satisfaction and profit

This study seeks to examine customer satisfaction (CS), productivity, and profitability in terms of the organizational commitment (OC) and job involvement (JI) of company customer contact personnel. Additionally, the study aims to investigate the relationship between the OC and JI of customer contact personnel in team and non‐team structures.

A field design is used for testing the study's four hypotheses and for examining the relationships between the independent variables and organizational profit and productivity. The study uses the service departments of 40 geographically diverse franchised automobile dealerships from one original equipment manufacturer.

The OC of customer contact personnel was significantly correlated with CS but not profit and productivity. On the other hand, the JI of customer contact personnel was significantly correlated with CS, profit and productivity. There was a significant difference between the team and non‐team structures for JI, but not for the OC of customer contact personnel.

Future studies need to focus on the potential effect of compensations schemes on the relationships between OC, JI and CS within team and non‐team structures.

This study offers some insight to whether teams provide any motivational benefit in terms of commitment and job involvement. Further, there is clear evidence that team structures increase productivity and net profit. It is hoped that this research will offer more support for the need to shift some of an organization's strategic service vision inward onto the employees.

This is one of the few studies that examine the dependent variables of profit, productivity and customer satisfaction across 40 different service organizations.