The trade-off of servicing empowerment on employees' service performance: examining the underlying motivation and workload mechanisms

被引:68
作者
Chan, Kimmy Wa [1 ]
Lam, Wing [1 ]
机构
[1] Hong Kong Polytech Univ, Dept Management & Mkt, Kowloon, Hong Kong, Peoples R China
关键词
Agency theory; Servicing empowerment; Task motivation and perceived workload; Customer complaint handling; Organizational citizenship behaviors toward customers; Performance appraisal; Principal-agent service goal congruence; ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR; CUSTOMER ORIENTATION; INTRINSIC MOTIVATION; JOB CHARACTERISTICS; EMOTIONAL LABOR; SELF-EFFICACY; AGENCY; SATISFACTION; MANAGEMENT; BURNOUT;
D O I
10.1007/s11747-011-0250-9
中图分类号
F [经济];
学科分类号
02 ;
摘要
Literature on empowerment as an internal marketing practice primarily documents positive effects on employees' job performance, though increasing evidence suggests conflicting viewpoints. This study adopts an agency theoretical perspective to propose a workload mechanism, according to which the delegation of power from supervisors (principals) to service employees (agents) (i.e., servicing empowerment) is costly to employees and increases their perceived workload, which hampers their performance to serve customers. Using a laboratory experiment and a survey, this research reveals that the perceived workload and extant motivational mechanisms have conflicting effects on employees' service performance. The former exerts a significant negative impact on tasks that involve conflicting principal-agent interests (e.g., handling customer complaints) but not on tasks with aligned principal-agent interests (e.g., organizational citizenship behaviors). Two control systems, performance appraisal (accurate and infrequent feedback) and principal-agent service goal congruence, mitigate the dysfunctional effect of perceived workload on employees' service performance.
引用
收藏
页码:609 / 628
页数:20
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