Service models and culture: impact on work behaviours

Abstract

Purpose Service employees’ cultural values play an integral part in the service encounter. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether frontline employees’ (FLEs) individual cultural values moderate the relationship between service models and work behaviours and whether these behaviours influence their psychological well-being. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected online from 341 US and Indian respondents who spent at least 40 per cent of their work time interacting with customers. Cultural values were measured as individual-level constructs. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to test hypotheses. Findings Individualism/collectivism significantly moderates the relationship between service models and work-related outcome, in particular organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB), while uncertainty avoidance does not. Collectivism strengthens the positive linkage between the win-win service model and OCB but weakens the association of OCB with the efficiency model. FLEs with the win-win model display more surface acting when they have low uncertainty avoidance and high power distance. Employee psychological well-being is then influenced negatively by surface acting, but positively by OCB. Research limitations/implications A more varied sample covering additional countries and a wider range of industries could provide additional insights. Practical implications The results of this study are particularly beneficial for service firms that require to satisfy customers by managing culturally diverse FLEs. Originality/value Extending the limited research on service models, this study examines the interplay of culture and service models and its impact on FLE work behaviours and the resultant well-being. The findings thus provide greater insights in how service employees’ cultural orientations influence their work behaviours and psychological well-being.

Frontline employee age and customer mistreatment: a meta-analysis

“…There are many reasons as to why power distance may have a bearing on the relationship between age and customer mistreatment. First, in high power distance countries, employees' emotions are less valued (Mathies et al, 2018), and these employees strictly rely on formal rules and supervisory guidance (Lian et al, 2012). However, these cultural differences do not conform well with the flexible and relational nature of the service environment and may cause severe conflicts between customers and frontline employees (Sliter and Jones, 2016).…”

Challenges and opportunities for services marketers in a culturally diverse global marketplace

“…All the papers included in this special issue make a useful contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the services customers and service employees in multicultural markets; however there are still many unaddressed issues and unanswered questions that future research may address. First, most current research on this topic is still restricted to only a few countries, such as Australia (Summers et al, 2018), India (Malik et al, 2018;Mathies and Wong, 2018;Mishra et al, 2018) and United States (Ang et al, 2018;Mathies and Wong, 2018;Zolfagharian et al, 2018), with some exceptions such as Austria (Sichtmann and Micevski, 2018) and Chile (Pezzuti et al, 2018). Hence, we need more studies in other countries that have traditionally been multi-cultural, such as Brazil, UK, Singapore and Malaysia as well as those that have become multi-cultural more recently as a result of the rise in immigration, such as Germany, France and Italy.…”

“…Hence, we need more studies in other countries that have traditionally been multi-cultural, such as Brazil, UK, Singapore and Malaysia as well as those that have become multi-cultural more recently as a result of the rise in immigration, such as Germany, France and Italy. Second, most studies on this topic still continue to focus on the customers' perspective in business-to-consumer services although some have begun to investigate the service employees' point-of-view (e.g., Henderson et al, 2018;Mathies and Wong, 2018) and business-to-business services (Malik et al, 2018). We clearly need more research in a wider variety of multicultural and cross-cultural service settings, representing a broader range of perspectives, including service customers, frontline employees, salespeople, after-sales service providers.…”

“…Customer responses in intercultural service encounters e.g., customer reactions to ethnic/cultural dissimilarity with servicce employees (Etgar and Fuchs, 2011), service failure and recovery (de Matos et al, 2011), employee's acculturation behaviours (Poulis et al, 2013), ethnic accents (Tombs and Rao Hill, 2014); stereotyping of culturally different service employees by customers (Hopkins et al, 2005;Javalgi and Martin, 2007;Ueltschy et al, 2007), perceived discrimination by service employees Antecedents of customer and employee perceptions and behaviours in intercultural service encounters e.g., attentiveness (Lee, 2015), acculturation behaviours (Gaur et al, 2017) and linguistic choices of frontline service employees (Zolfagharian et al, 2018), language homophily between customers and employees (Pezzuti et al, 2018), perceived cultural distance and customer participation (Ang et al, 2018), customer-employee (mis)match and cultural vs. non-cultural attributions (Sichtmann and Micevski, 2018), Intercultural competence and customer facial recognition (Henderson et al, 2018), Technology readiness and consumer socialization of teenagers (Mishra, Maheswarappa and Colby, 2018), religiosity and consumer choice of fitness services (Summers et al, 2018), Impact of service models and culture on work behaviours (Mathies and Wong, 2018).…”

“…The eighth paper, titled "Service models and culture: impact on work behaviours" (Mathies and Wong, 2018), explores the influence of the cultural values of frontline employees (FLEs) on their work behaviours. Specifically, the authors draw on the organisational behaviour literature to investigate the impact of culture and service models on emotional labour and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB), and the resultant psychological well-being of FLEs.…”