Customer orientation or employee orientation: which matters more? The moderating role of firm size

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to examine several antecedents of employee satisfaction (ES) and turnover intention (TI), including customer orientation (CO) and employee orientation (EO). The purposes are to investigate the effect of EO and CO and their interaction on employee performance, and to verify the moderating effect of firm size. Design/methodology/approach A mixed model with firm size as a potential moderator was constructed through a hierarchical linear modeling approach with data collected from 1,006 employees at 127 firms. Findings The results indicate that customer and EO and their interaction affected ES, CO and its interaction with EO significantly affected TI and the effects differed according to firm size. These results suggest that the influence of customer and EO depends on firm size. Originality/value This study contributes to verifying the effect of EO and CO and the interaction effects on employee performance, an area that has remained unexamined in the literature. It also investigates the moderating effect of firm size on EO and CO, which affects employee performance. It is suggested that companies determine whether EO or CO matters more according to the size of company.

A Structural Equation Modelling Evaluation of Antecedents and Interconnections of Call Centre Agents’ Intention to Quit

“…The factor loadings for each construct were reasonably high and compared well with prior research (e.g., Park et al 2018;Aliyu and Nyadzayo 2016;Crossley et al 2007). From the evidence in Table 1 above, the items for each factor were appropriate measures for the constructs at the 0.5 loading benchmark (e.g., Conway and Huffcutt 2003;Byrne 2010;Park et al 2018;Chen and Tsai 2007). In this study, two items were loaded at the 0.4 level but retained as appropriate measures of their constructs (e.g., Field 2009;Crossley et al 2007).…”

“…Equally underlined in this study is the network of relationships that aid the understanding of employees quit or stay decisions. While customer orientation does not influence job satisfaction, which contrasts several works (e.g., Park et al 2018;Aliyu and Nyadzayo 2016;Babakus et al 2011) but supports Auh et al (2016), higher customer orientation would contribute to a lower intention to quit (e.g., Park et al 2018;Aliyu and Nyadzayo 2016). Interestingly, a significant positive mediating influence of job satisfaction on the relationship between customer orientation and the intention to quit was found in this study.…”

“…Further empirical insights from this study illuminate the associated organizational components from the point of direct association to job satisfaction and the intention to quit, as well as the mediating capacity of job satisfaction in the association between organizational components and the intention to quit. Thus, the findings from this study contribute to the understanding of the network of relationships that explain employee intention to quit behavior (e.g., Aliyu and Nyadzayo 2016;Park et al 2018;Abdullateef et al 2014;Aladwan et al 2013;Pradhan et al 2019).…”

“…The criticality of customer orientation to identifying, meeting, and exceeding customers' expectations, as well as propelling customer loyalty and driving organizational profitability, has been reiterated in the literature (e.g., Pandey and Charoensukmongkol 2019;Narver and Slater 1990;Park et al 2018;Stock 2016;Dean 2007;Abdullateef et al 2014;Opute 2020a;Kennedy and Laczniak 2016). Indeed, emerging market insights underline customer orientation as a critical factor of competitive advantage (e.g., Contractor 2013;Izogo 2016) while noting that customer orientation enables effective crosscultural selling (Pandey and Charoensukmongkol 2019).…”

Customer Orientation of B2B Firms in Emerging Markets: Evidence from Russia

“…The majority of B2B studies apply the measurement tools developed by [Narver, Slater, 1990;. Depending on the scientific preferences and goals of the research the authors build their hypotheses and models on the general theory of CO [Liao et al, 2011;Iyer et al, 2018;Park et al, 2018].…”