Predicting Customer Service Employees’ Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intentions: The Roles of Customer Interactional Injustice and Interdependent Self-Construal

Abstract

Research has primarily examined supervisors and coworkers as sources of unfair interpersonal treatment (i.e., interactional injustice) in the workplace. Unfair treatment, however, can also originate with customers. Using a crosssectional, correlational research design (N = 172), we examined the associations among customer injustice, employee job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. Drawing on relational theories of fairness, we also examined whether employees who more strongly define themselves through their interpersonal relationships (i.e., those with stronger interdependent self-construals) would exhibit stronger injusticeattitudes associations. Results showed that, overall, greater injustice was associated with lower job satisfaction but not greater turnover intentions. Moreover, as expected, the strength of employees' interdependent self-construals moderated the injustice-attitudes relations: Relationship-oriented employees showed significant associations between injustice and both job satisfaction and turnover intentions, whereas those with weaker relationship orientations did not. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

Impact of Workforce Development on Organizational Effectiveness: Evidence from Pakistani Public-Sector Organizations

“…An item wording was adjusted for the final version of the questionnaire. Different researchers (Holmvall & Sidhu, 2007;Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhorta, 2005;Reynoso & Moores, 1995) have used a similar approach.…”

Organisational Justice, Organisational Citizenship Behaviour, Job Satisfaction and Leader–Member Exchange

“…McDowall and Fletcher ( 2004 ) associate interactional justice with the fairness of interpersonal communication relating to organisational procedures. It is broader than verbal aggression as perceived unfair behaviour need not be accompanied by anger Niehoff and Moorman ( 1993 ), Ball et al ( 1994 ), Konovsky and Organ ( 1996 ) Folger and Konovsky ( 1989 ) and Mishra and Spreitzer ( 1998 ) Types of Organisational Justice (Holmvall and Sidhu 2007 ). Cohen-Charash and Spector ( 2001 : 4) defi ne it as 'the human side of organisational practices, that is, the way the management (or those controlling rewards and resources) is behaving towards the recipient of justice'.…”

“…Research on interactional justice focuses predominantly on higher authorities as sources of justice or injustice during the communication of outcome-allocation decisions (Holmvall and Sidhu 2007 ). However, this is considered too narrow (Bies 2001(Bies , 2005Cropanzano et al 2001 ) as people's concern about interactional justice extend into day-to-day interactions as well (Colquitt et al 2005 ;Mikula et al 1990 ).…”

A multifoci integration of justice, commitment, and positive affective well-being

“…Recently, researchers have also considered coworkers (Branscombe, Spears, Ellemers, & Doosje, 2002;Cropanzano, Li, & James, 2007;Donovan, Drasgow, & Munson, 1998;Lavelle et al, 2007;Lim, Cortina, & Magley, 2008) and customers (Holmvall & Sidhu, 2007;Rupp & Cropanzano, 2002;Rupp, McCance, Spencer, & Sonntag, 2008;Rupp & Spencer, 2006) as sources of fairness judgements. Recognition that multiple sources of fairness perceptions exist within organizations has led to a new multi-foci framework of justice (Lavelle et al, 2007).…”

“…Perceptions of justice of various sources, such as organizations, supervisors, coworkers, and customers, are associated with different antecedents and outcomes (Donovan et al, 1998;Holmvall & Sidhu, 2007;Rupp & Cropanzano, 2002;Rupp et al, 2008). However, only a small amount of research has examined coworkers as a source of justice evaluations (Branscombe et al, 2002;Cropanzano et al, 2007;Donovan et al, 1998;Lavelle et al, 2007;Lim et al, 2008).…”