Frontline employee age and customer mistreatment: a meta-analysis

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive meta-analytic examination of the relationship between employee age and customer mistreatment. Drawing on socioemotional selectivity theory and taking the cross-cultural and cross-sectoral differences into account and making the country-level and occupation-level comparisons possible for uncovering when age matters, the role of employee age on decreasing customer mistreatment is examined. Design/methodology/approach The data comprises of 103 independent samples collected from 48,067 frontline employees. Random effects individual correction meta-analysis procedure is used to aggregate correlation coefficients and correct them for sampling, measurement and range restriction errors. Meta-regression is used for examining the impact of key moderators. Findings Results consistently show that frontline employee exposure to customer mistreatment is decreased with age. Regarding national differences, negative associations are stronger in low power distance countries. Age has more potential to provide high-quality relations with customers in healthcare, banking, compared to call centers and hospitality sectors. Practical implications Healthy customer relations with fewer customer mistreatments come with employee age. However, results warn service managers about cultural and industry-related boundary conditions such as power distance and service orientation expectations. Originality/value This study is the first meta-analysis on the relationship between two contemporary challenges in organizational frontlines: the aging workforce and customer mistreatment. By conducting comprehensive data collection and analyses, this study concludes that older employees, especially in low power distance cultures, bring wisdom to service environments.

Strength and vulnerability: Indirect effects of age on changes in occupational well-being through emotion regulation and physiological disease.

“…We further found negative associations between age and experienced incivility at T2 (r = −.23, p < .001) and T3 (r = −.29, p < .001; see Table 2) in our study, suggesting that older employees generally experience lower levels of incivility shown by their supervisors and coworkers than younger employees. This finding is consistent with a recent meta-analysis that, based on 103 independent samples, reported an average relationship of ρ = −.18 between employee age and customer mistreatment (Okan et al, 2021). These associations can be explained in part by the social input model (Fingerman & Charles, 2010), which offers that older adults act in ways to make their social environments more benign, and that older adults' social partners are motivated to treat them more kindly (e.g., to avoid conflict).…”

The antecedents of customer mistreatment: a meta-analytic review

“…In particular, by drawing upon the perpetrator predation framework, three types of antecedents were classified. The negative correlation between age and customer mistreatment was first established, which was consistent with findings reported by Okan et al (2021), despite drawing upon a distinctive perspective (i.e. socioemotional selectivity theory).…”

“…However, studies on antecedents are fragmented and underestimated. To date, two meta-analytic reviews on customer mistreatment have been conducted, with one study focusing on frontline employee’s age as a predictor and occupational and cultural factors as moderators of customer mistreatment (Okan et al , 2021), while the other study had outlined customer uncivil behaviors outcomes and boundary conditions (Wang et al , 2021). Despite their significant contributions toward the advancement of customer mistreatment, antecedents of customer mistreatment were underestimated.…”

“…However, this requirement is often demanding and challenging for service employees. Furthermore, the customer may not always be right and service employees are not always respected by customers (Okan et al , 2021). Frontline service employees often experience customer mistreatment or low-quality treatment from customers during the service delivery process, a primary concern for service organizations (Wang et al , 2011).…”

Guest editorial: age is a construct, not a characteristic

“…Changing perspectives, Okan et al (2020) provide a metaanalysis on frontline employee age and the relationship to customer mistreatment. Analyzing more than 100 independent samples, the authors find that customer mistreatment decreases with age.…”