Danielle D. van Jaarsveld

The Role of Job Demands and Emotional Exhaustion in the Relationship Between Customer and Employee Incivility

Workplace incivility research has focused on within-organizational sources of incivility, and less attention has been paid to outside-organizational sources such as customers. In a cross-sectional field study, the authors found that service employees (N = 307) who reported higher levels of uncivil treatment from customers engaged in higher levels of incivility toward customers. Specifically, the results show that customer incivility toward employees is related to employee incivility toward customers through job demands first and then emotional exhaustion. The authors discuss the implications of these results and highlight directions for future research.

Exploring the effects of individual customer incivility encounters on employee incivility: : The moderating roles of entity (in)civility and negative affectivity

Incivility between customers and employees is common in many service organizations. These encounters can have negative outcomes for employees, customers, and the organization. To date, researchers have tended to study incivility as an aggregated and accumulated phenomenon (entity perspective). In the present study, we examined incivility as it occurs during a specific service encounter (event perspective) alongside the entity perspective. Using a mixed-method multilevel field study of customer service interactions, we show that individual customer incivility encounters (i.e., events) trigger employee incivility as a function of the employees overall accumulated impression of the (in)civility in his or her customer interactions, such that the effects are more pronounced among employees who generally perceive their customer interactions to be more versus less civil. We also find that these interactive effects occur only among employees who are lower (vs. higher) in negative affectivity. Our results show that, in order to expand the understanding of customer incivility, it is important to study the incivility encounter, the social context in which negative customer interactions occur, and individual differences.

Extending the multifoci perspective: The role of supervisor justice and moral identity in the relationship between customer justice and customer-directed sabotage

The multifoci perspective of justice proposes that individuals tend to target their (in)justice reactions toward the perceived source of the mistreatment. Empirical support for target-specific reactions, however, has been mixed. To explore theoretically relevant reasons for these discrepant results and address unanswered questions in the multifoci justice literature, the present research examines how different justice sources might interactively predict target-specific reactions, and whether these effects occur as a function of moral identity. Results from a sample of North American frontline service employees (N = 314, Study 1) showed that among employees with lower levels of moral identity, low supervisor justice exacerbated the association between low customer justice and customer-directed sabotage, whereas this exacerbation effect was not observed among employees with higher levels of moral identity. This 3-way interaction effect was replicated in a sample of South Korean employees (N = 265, Study 2).

It’s all in the mix: Determinants and consequences of workforce blending in call centres

Supplementing the full-time permanent workforce with part-time staff is a widespread practice among firms. To better understand this dynamic, we evaluate how work organization choices influence the degree of part-time use by analysing North American survey data from call centre establishments. We also evaluate the effect of part-time use on the voluntary turnover behaviour of the full-time permanent workforce. For example, firms with greater reliance on a high involvement approach to work organization relied less on part-time use than those pursuing a low involvement approach. For firms that choose to rely heavily on part-time use, we find that this decision has consequences for their full-time permanent workforce, namely higher voluntary turnover among their full-time permanent staff. Interestingly, greater reliance on a high involvement approach appears to weaken the positive relationship between part-time use and voluntary turnover among the full-time employees.

The Influence of Capital Structure on Strategic Human Capital: Evidence From U.S. and Canadian Firms

Strategic human capital research has emphasized the importance of human capital as a resource for sustained competitive advantage, but firm investments in this intangible asset vary considerably. This article examines whether and how external pressures on firms from capital markets influence their human capital strategy. These pressures have increased over the past three decades due to banking deregulation, technological innovation, and the rise of institutional investors and new financial intermediaries. Against this backdrop, this study examines whether a firm’s capital structure as measured by share turnover, shareholder concentration, and financial leverage is associated with firm investment in strategic human capital. Based on survey and objective financial data from 221 establishments in the United States and Canada, our analysis indicates that firms with greater share turnover, higher shareholder concentration, and higher levels of financial leverage are less likely to invest in human resource systems that create strategic human capital. Differences in national financial systems also lead to differential effects for U.S. and Canadian firms.

Compensation Management in Outsourced Service Organizations and its Implications for Quit Rates, Absenteeism and Workforce Performance: Evidence from Canadian Call Centres

We investigate compensation management in in‐house and outsourced call centres with original establishment‐level data collected in Canada. Our analysis reveals that both customer service representatives (CSRs) and managers employed in outsourced call centres earn 91 per cent of the cash pay earned by their in‐house counterparts. Lower cash pay levels in outsourced call centres are related to higher CSR quit rates and absenteeism. Although CSR cash pay is associated with improved workforce performance, the disparity in cash pay between in‐house and outsourced call centres does not result in a significant difference in workforce performance.

The Canadian Contact Centre Industry: Strategy, Work Organization & Human Resource Management

Enormous growth has occurred in the contact centre segment of the Canadian economy over the past decade. In part due to re-engineering, restructuring, and outsourcing, as well as to the technological changes that have facilitated this growth, the contact centre sector has experienced enormous growth and considerable changes. Widespread diversity in this sector is now evident - both in terms of employment practices as well as in outcomes experienced by employees. Despite this dynamic growth and increasing heterogeneity, relatively little is known about this industry on any systematic basis. This report is a first step in creating a deeper understanding about this sectors employment practices and about outcomes of interest to both firms and workers. This study funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) is part of the Global Call Centre Project, the first large-scale coordinated international study of work and human resource practices in call centres that includes over twenty countries worldwide. This project is coordinated by Rosemary Batt (Cornell University), David Holman (Sheffield University), and Ursula Holtgrewe (Forba). In this report, we present important data for Canadian contact centre managers. The results are based on responses from 406 contact centre managers in a broad array of industries and in all ten provinces, and site visits to contact centres located across Canada. We collected data on hiring practices, technology use, location decision criteria, work organization choices from contact centres that serve a wide range of industries - financial services, telecommunications, retail, IT and technical support services, hospitality, manufacturing, print and media, and public and non-profit sectors. We analyze management and employment practices from multiple perspectives including region, organizational characteristics (inhouse, outsource, union & non-union), and type of work performed by the contact centre.

Accelerating employee-related scholarship in service management: Research streams, propositions, and commentaries

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to accelerate research related to the employee-facets of service management by summarizing current developments in multiple research streams, providing propositions, and articulating new directions for theory and empirical inquiry. Design/methodology/approach Seven scholars provide short reviews of the core topics and findings from four employee-related research streams – collective turnover, service climate, emotional labor, and occupational stress; and generate propositions to guide future theoretical and empirical work. Four distinguished service scholars – David Bowen, Ray Fisk, Christian Gronroos, and Jochen Wirtz comment upon these research streams and provide future directions for accelerating employee-related research in service management. Findings All four research-streams yield insights that have the potential to advance service management research. Commentaries from the distinguished scholars further integrate this work with key concerns within service management including technology-enablement, transformative services, and service strategy. Originality/value This paper is unique in its scope of coverage of management topics related to service and its aim to promote interdisciplinary dialog between service management scholars and researchers conducting employee-related research relevant to services.

Sticks and Stones Can Break my Bones but Words Can Also Hurt Me: The Relationship Between Customer Verbal Aggression and Employee Incivility.

Customer service employees tend to react negatively to customer incivility by demonstrating incivility in return, thereby likely reducing customer service quality. Research, however, has yet to uncover precisely what customers do that results in employee incivility. Through transcript and computerized text analysis in a multilevel, multisource, mixed-method field study of customer service events (N = 434 events), we found that employee incivility can occur as a function of customer (a) aggressive words, (b) second-person pronoun use (e.g., you, your), (c) interruptions, and (d) positive emotion words. First, the positive association between customer aggressive words and employee incivility was more pronounced when the verbal aggression included second-person pronouns, which we label targeted aggression. Second, we observed a 2-way interaction between targeted aggression and customer interruptions such that employees demonstrated more incivility when targeted customer verbal aggression was accompanied by more (vs. fewer) interruptions. Third, this 2-way interaction predicting employee incivility was attenuated when customers used positive emotion words. Our results support a resource-based explanation, suggesting that customer verbal aggression consumes employee resources potentially leading to self-regulation failure, whereas positive emotion words from customers can help replenish employee resources that support self-regulation. The present study highlights the advantages of examining what occurs within customer-employee interactions to gain insight into employee reactions to customer incivility.

Industrial relations and labour market segmentation in Dutch call centres

This article uses qualitative and quantitative evidence from call centres to show how the Dutch industrial relations system balances employer needs for workforce flexibility with the interests of employees. The normalization of temporary agency work in the Netherlands helps employers build workforce flexibility, reducing pressures on firms to subcontract work and to escape the existing regulatory system. In addition, the inclusiveness of the Dutch collective bargaining system, with the majority of call centre workers covered by a collective agreement, reduces differences in working conditions. Nonetheless, variations in negotiated agreements covering in-house workers, subcontractors and temporary agency workers lead to tiers of segmentation among these secondary labour market jobs.