The Relationship Between Employees’ Daily Customer Injustice and Customer-Directed Sabotage: Cross-Level Moderation Effects of Emotional Stability and Attentiveness

Abstract

Customer injustice has received considerable attention in the field of organizational behavior because it generates a variety of negative outcomes. Among possible negative consequences, customer-directed sabotage is the most common reaction, which impacts individuals’ well-being and the prosperity of organizations. To minimize such negative consequences, researchers have sought to identify boundary conditions that could potentially attenuate the occurrence of customer-directed sabotage. In this study, we explore potential attenuation effects of emotional stability and attentiveness on the customer injustice–sabotage linkage. The results showed emotional stability and attentiveness moderate the relationship between customer injustice and customer-directed sabotage. Specifically, the representatives with higher (vs. lower) emotional stability or higher (vs. lower) attentiveness are less likely to engage in customer-directed sabotage when they experience customer injustice. Moreover, there is a three-way interaction among daily customer injustice, emotional stability, and attentiveness that predicts daily customer-directed sabotage. Theoretical and practical contributions, limitations, and directions for future development are also discussed.

Conceptualizing employees' behavioral pattern changes by experiencing customer mistreatment: Integrating moral self‐regulation and dual process model perspectives

“…Modern call centers have put considerable effort toward reducing call center representatives' sabotage toward customers using frequent call quality assurance monitoring and random test calls. Nevertheless, recent empirical sabotage research has shown that mistreated call center representatives still engage in sabotage, and the manner of such retaliation becomes more subtle and indirect (e.g., intentionally putting the customer on hold for a long period of time or purposefully transferring the customer to the wrong department) because they want to find a way to retaliate even while being strictly monitored by the company (Skarlicki et al., 2016; Song et al., 2021; Song & Park, 2022). Furthermore, such a strict policy on call monitoring could increase employees' surface acting and the feeling of emotional labor, which eventually lead to higher turnover and absenteeism (Grandey, 2000).…”

“…Although the majority of current studies on customer mistreatment have developed under the assumption that customer mistreatment as the starting point of the causal linkage between customer mistreatment and workplace sabotage (e.g., Skarlicki et al., 2008, 2016; Song et al., 2021; Song & Park, 2022; Wang et al., 2011), it is also possible that customers' experiences as targets of sabotage can trigger their inappropriate misbehavior toward other call center representatives in the future. Therefore, a future conceptual model should develop new and potential propositions to further articulate the causal linkage between workplace sabotage as an independent variable and customer mistreatment as a dependent variable, which can bring a new perspective to customer mistreatment research.…”

“…Understanding customer mistreatment as a chronic continuous stressor is crucial for two reasons. First, numerous studies have indicated that individuals chronically exposed to stressors demonstrate more aggressive behavior and less prosocial behavior (Rambo et al, 2017;Song et al, 2023;Tielbeek et al, 2018). This provides a solid rationale for thoroughly exploring the associations among chronic stressors (i.e., customer mistreatment), aggression (i.e., workplace sabotage), and prosocial behavior (i.e., OCB-customer), which have rarely been investigated in previous studies of customer mistreatment.…”

“…In other words, customer mistreatment research has focused on exploring the process of restoring fairness perception based upon the victims' motivation to get even (Skarlicki et al., 2008, 2016), and studies have been especially focused on exploring what boundary conditions can affect employees' intention to commit workplace sabotage. For example, multiple studies have found that experiencing fair treatment from one's supervisor (i.e., supervisory fairness) can reduce employees’ sabotage intention based on perceptions of fairness restoration (Skarlicki et al., 2016; Song et al., 2021; Song & Park, 2022). Furthermore, moral identity has received close attention when exploring the relationship between customer mistreatment and workplace sabotage, especially regarding how two aspects of moral identity (internalization and symbolization) interact to predict the customer mistreatment‐sabotage linkage.…”