Principles and Principals: Do Customer Stewardship and Agency Control Compete or Complement When Shaping Frontline Employee Behavior?

Abstract

This article introduces customer stewardship control (CSC) to the marketing field. This concept represents a frontline employee's felt ownership of and moral responsibility for customers’ overall welfare. In two studies, the authors show that CSC is a more encompassing construct than customer orientation, which reflects a frontline employee's focus on meeting customers’ needs. They provide evidence that the former is more potent in shaping in- and extra-role employee behaviors. Moreover, they highlight how CSC operates in conjunction with an organization's agency control system: Stewardship's positive influence on in- and extra-role behavior is weaker in the presence of high agency control. They offer actionable advice about how to solve the resulting managerial control dilemma. Finally, the authors show that CSC depends on drivers that reside at the individual level (employee relatedness), the team level (team competence), or both levels of aggregation (employee and team autonomy). These findings show how to effectively design a frontline employee's work environment to ensure optimal frontline performance.

What Counts versus what can be Counted: The Complex Interplay of Market Orientation and Marketing Performance Measurement

“…Therefore, in large firms, MPM across multiple performance domains is likely to positively complement market-oriented culture in enhancing the complex organization units' performance (Jaworski 1988). In particular, comprehensive MPM may help managers and employees of a large and complex organization to reduce uncertainty (Mintz and Currim 2015) and clarify goals (Gebhardt, Carpenter, and Sherry 2006;Schepers et al 2012) However, having a less complex organizational "machinery" to track, small firms rarely employ multiple business units, locations, or teams, making the simple customer feedback provided by MO sufficient. Moreover, it is likely that especially in small firms, reporting requirements associated with heavy MPM systems will reduce resources directed at actual market-oriented behaviors of understanding customer needs and providing superior customer service (Schepers et al 2012), thus thwarting market-oriented employee engagement (see, e.g., Ott 2011 Market position.…”

“…In particular, comprehensive MPM may help managers and employees of a large and complex organization to reduce uncertainty (Mintz and Currim 2015) and clarify goals (Gebhardt, Carpenter, and Sherry 2006;Schepers et al 2012) However, having a less complex organizational "machinery" to track, small firms rarely employ multiple business units, locations, or teams, making the simple customer feedback provided by MO sufficient. Moreover, it is likely that especially in small firms, reporting requirements associated with heavy MPM systems will reduce resources directed at actual market-oriented behaviors of understanding customer needs and providing superior customer service (Schepers et al 2012), thus thwarting market-oriented employee engagement (see, e.g., Ott 2011 Market position. Regarding market position, marketoriented firms with different positions may also benefit from different information processes in their marketing (Day and Nedungadi 1994;Greve 1998) and thus need a different focus in the content of their MPM (Jaworski 1988;Mintz and Currim 2013).…”

“…Following this rationale, we propose the following: Market followers, in contrast, are likely to benefit from a more selective approach to MPM, because they do not need to be equally vigilant in all domains of performance. As for small firms, excessive MPM reduces resources directed at concrete market-oriented behaviors of the organization (Schepers et al 2012), which a market follower firm would need to maintain or improve its customer service and/or competitive position (Narver and Slater 1990). A thorough understanding of customers and competitors, in particular, may help a market-follower firm differentiate its offering (Homburg, Artz, and Wieseke 2012) and survive or improve its competitiveness under intense competition (Jaworski 1988).…”

The Relevant of Contingency Theory and Stewardship Theory on the Internal Audit Research

“…Because stewardship ensure the alignment of interests, employees additional efforts from self-actualization in order to benefit the customer (Schepers et al, 2012). This shows that internal auditors can also be a steward in assisting the achievement of organizational objective through the influence of various relevant variables.…”

An exploratory study of how a Korean chaebol’s learning culture facilitates customer service

“…This is due to the fact that both the staff behaviour dimension (human factor) and the marketing dimension are linked. By encouraging employees to use their discretion and take the initiative when interacting with customers, customer stewardship control will result that goes beyond the traditional customer orientation approach (Schepers, Falk, de Ruyter, de Jong & Hammerschmidt, 2012). The main benefit of the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 customer stewardship control approach is that it highlights how marketers, as decision makers and/or facilitators, motivate staff to share information among their colleagues in order to maintain the organization's reputation .…”