Who's the Boss?

Abstract

Following a role-theoretic perspective, we conceptualize employees who work with customers as brokers between an organization and its customers. This unique organizational position increases the likelihood that its occupants will face conflicting demands from the two constituencies they serve, the organization and the customer. We propose, however, that the work conditions of resource adequacy, role clarity, and autonomy moderate the effect that working with customers has on role conflict. Survey data from 5,811 employees at a national telecommunications firm are used to test these role-theoretic hypotheses. Compared with those who do not work with customers, “customer work” does produce greater role conflict. Also, as hypothesized, when comparing customer work and noncustomer work, role clarity reduces role conflict more for noncustomer workers, whereas autonomy reduces it more for customer workers. Suggestions are offered for additional applications of role theory to the study of employees who work with customers.

Impact of Job Clarity on Nurses’ Job Satisfaction: A Moderating Role of Fairness Perception

“…According to Troyer, Mueller, and Osinsky (2000) a higher level of job clarity, reduced the level of issues at job time. Bray and Brawley, (2002) outlined that clear role of employee motivated them to work beyond the expectation of the organization.…”

The Critical Roles of Task Conflict and Job Autonomy in the Relationship Between Proactive Personalities and Innovative Employee Behavior

“…Job autonomy—also sometimes called job control (Ohly & Fritz, 2009)—refers to the degree to which the task provides substantial freedom, independence, and discretion in scheduling the work and in determining the procedures to be used in carrying it out (Hackman & Oldham, 1980). A high level of job autonomy allows employees to decide how to perform their work (Fried, Hollenbeck, Slowik, Tiegs, & Ben-David, 1999; Troyer, Mueller, & Osinsky, 2000) and has been found to be an important predictor of proactive outcomes, including suggesting improvements (Axtel, Holman, Unsworth, Wall, & Waterson, 2000), presumably because of a higher perceived controllability of one’s tasks (Parker et al, 2006).…”

Flex‐time as a moderator of the job stress‐work motivation relationship

“…autonomy) to select their work hours, we believe the autonomy construct is of theoretical importance to our study. As autonomy within a job grows, individuals will enjoy greater discretion in deciding the best ways to perform the work (Fried et al, 1999;Troyer et al, 2000) and realize more opportunities to increase their job functions (Morgeson et al, 2005;Organ, 1988). In 2007, DeVaro, Li, and Brookshire analyzed Hackman and Oldham's (1975, 1976, 1980 job characteristics model by using data collected from a large number of British companies.…”