The authors develop and test a model of service employee management that examines constructs simultaneously across three interfaces of the service delivery process: manager-employee, employee-role, and employee-customer. The authors examine the attitudinal and behavioral responses of customer-contact employees that can influence customers’ perceptions of service quality, the relationships among these responses, and three formal managerial control mechanisms (empowerment, behavior-based employee evaluation, and management commitment to service quality). The findings indicate that managers who are committed to service quality are more likely to empower their employees and use behavior-based evaluation. However, the use of empowerment has both positive and negative consequences in the management of contact employees. Some of the negative consequences are mitigated by the positive effects of behavior-based employee evaluation. To increase customers’ perceptions of service quality, managers must increase employees’ self-efficacy and job satisfaction, and reduce employees’ role conflict and ambiguity. Implications for the management of customer-contact service employees and directions for further research are discussed.

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It is widely held that a customer-oriented firm is more likely to deliver exceptional service quality and create satisfied customers. However, little research has addressed the question of how the orientation can be disseminated among employees throughout the firm. This dissemination is especially important in service firms in which frontline, customer contact employees are responsible for translating a customer-oriented strategy into quality service. The authors propose a structural model that explains how service firms can disseminate their customer-oriented strategy by aligning the strategy with specific management-and employee-initiated control mechanisms (i.e., formalization, empowerment, behavior-based employee evaluation, and work group socialization) that lead to increased commitment and shared values on the part of customer contact employees. The findings indicate that there are three "corridors of influence" between customer-oriented strategy and shared employee values. The dominant corridor, which focuses on dual (management-and employee-initiated) control, emphasizes the importance of work group socialization and organizational commitment in the dissemination of customer-oriented strategy. A secondary corridor focuses on two management-initiated control mechanisms: formalization and behavior-based evaluation. The final corridor, which focuses on the empowerment of customer contact employees, has a more limited impact than originally hypothesized. The authors discuss implications for the implementation of customer-oriented strategy and the management of customer contact employees, along with several directions for further research.

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One of the continuing challenges in the hotel industry is providing consistent levels of quality service across units. Although recruitment, selection, and training practices are often standardized across units (within a given market), frontline employees' performance varies. This study examines the role that individual unit management plays in this process by looking at how a manager's commitment to service quality and that person's leadership style affect the way frontline employees do their job. The fundamental implication of this study is that managers who are committed to service quality and employ an empowering leadership style can create a transformational climate that conveys their commitment to quality service to their frontline employees. This leads to employees who are more likely to share the organization's values, who understand their role in the organization, who are more satisfied with their jobs, and who perform at a higher level of quality in serving hotel guests.