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Outcomes of customer verbal aggression among hotel
employees Osman M. Karatepe, Ilkay Yorganci and Mine Haktanir
School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Eastern Mediterranean University, Gazimagusa,
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
Abstract
Purpose – The central purpose of this study is to develop and test a model which examines the effects of customer verbal aggression on emotional dissonance, emotional exhaustion, and job outcomes such as service recovery performance, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. The model also investigates the impact of emotional dissonance on emotional exhaustion and the effects of emotional dissonance and exhaustion on the above-mentioned job outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach – Data were gathered from a sample of frontline hotel employees in Northern Cyprus via self-administered questionnaires. A total number of 204 questionnaires were obtained.
Findings – As hypothesized, emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion were found to be significant outcomes of customer verbal aggression. The results demonstrated that emotional dissonance amplified exhaustion. The results further revealed that customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance intensified turnover intentions. As expected, emotional exhaustion reduced service recovery performance and job satisfaction and aggravated turnover intentions.
Research limitations/implications – The cross-sectional design of the study constrains the ability to make causal inferences. Therefore, future studies using longitudinal designs would be beneficial in establishing causal relationships. Although the paper controlled for common method bias via Harman’s single-factor test, future studies using multiple sources for data collection would minimize such a problem.
Practical implications – Hotel managers need to arrange training programmes to enable their employees to cope with the actions of boisterous and boorish customers. Having empowerment in the workplace seems to be an important weapon in managing such customers. In addition, managers should recruit and select the most suitable individuals for frontline service positions so that such employees can cope with difficulties associated with customer verbal aggression, emotional dissonance, and emotional exhaustion.
Originality/value – Empirical evidence pertaining to the consequences of customer verbal aggression in the hospitality management and marketing literatures is meagre. Thus the study partially fills this gap in the research stream of customer verbal aggression.
Keywords Consumer behaviour, Complaints, Employees, Hotels, Customer satisfaction, Northern Cyprus
Paper type Research paper
Introduction There are high expectations on frontline employees to deliver service quality, resolve customers’ complaints effectively, and accomplish customer satisfaction. Frontline employees, however, are confronted with customer verbal aggression, which refers to
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Received 30 July 2008 Revised 10 September 2008
Accepted 30 October 2008
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality
Management Vol. 21 No. 6, 2009
pp. 713-733 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0959-6119 DOI 10.1108/09596110910975972
customers’ verbal communications of anger that violate employees’ social norms (see Grandey et al., 2004) such as swearing, yelling, threats, condescending remarks, and sarcasm (Boyd, 2002; Grandey et al., 2007; Harris and Reynolds, 2003). A review of the relevant literature reveals that customer verbal aggression is prevalent in various service settings. For example, it was observed that 74 percent of the flight attendants and railway employees experienced verbal abuse (e.g. sarcasm, condescending remarks, and swearing) from passengers at least once a month (Boyd, 2002). According to another study, it was found that the majority of the call center employees had calls from verbally aggressive customers daily (Grandey et al., 2004). In addition, while they were describing their incidences/complaints, 70 percent of interviewed hospitality customers reported that they themselves had intentionally and openly verbally abused frontline employees for financial gain (Harris and Reynolds, 2004).
As cogently discussed in a very recent review of research on customer aggression (Yagil, 2008), “the customer is always right” philosophy results in unequal power between frontline employees and customers, requires employees to serve customers in a friendly and polite manner even in the event of customer verbal aggression and harassment, and encourages “pleasing the customer” at any cost. Under these circumstances, customer verbal aggression leads to emotional dissonance (Dormann and Zapf, 2004), which refers to the incongruence between felt and expressed emotions (Heuven and Bakker, 2003). Customer verbal aggression gives rise to emotional exhaustion (Ben-Zur and Yagil, 2005; Grandey et al., 2004; Winstanley and Whittington, 2002), which is the core dimension of burnout and refers to the lack of energy and depletion of emotional resources due to excessive psychological demands (Boles et al., 2000). In addition, customer verbal aggression undermines job performance (cf. Celik et al., 2007), erodes job satisfaction (Boyd, 2002), and heightens turnover intentions (Yagil, 2008).
The central purpose of our study, therefore, is to develop and test a model that investigates the consequences of customer verbal aggression using data gathered from frontline employees in Northern Cyprus hotels. Specifically, emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion are among the consequences examined in this study. The performance and affective outcomes investigated in our study are service recovery performance, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. Service recovery performance is conceptualized as “frontline service employees’ perceptions of their own abilities and actions to resolve a service failure to the satisfaction of the customer” (Babakus et al., 2003, p. 274). Job satisfaction is defined as “the pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job as achieving or facilitating the achievement of one’s job values” (Locke, 1969, p. 316), and turnover intentions refer to employees’ “willingness to leave an organization” (Thoresen et al., 2003, p. 918). The model also examines the impact of emotional dissonance on exhaustion and the relationships of emotional dissonance and exhaustion with the aforesaid performance and affective outcomes.
Our study makes several contributions to the hospitality management and marketing literatures. First, most of the extant research has focused on the aggressive behaviors of supervisors or coworkers in the workplace (Ben-Zur and Yagil, 2005; Grandey et al., 2004). However, frontline employees have frequent face-to-face or voice-to-voice interaction with customers and spend more time with customers in order to deal with a number of requests and complaints than their supervisors. In addition, their intense interaction with customers results in verbal aggression that is positively
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associated with emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion (Dormann and Zapf, 2004; Reynolds and Harris, 2006) and produces negative job outcomes (Yagil, 2008). Despite this recognition, empirical evidence on customer verbal aggression in the hospitality management and marketing literatures is not abundant. Accordingly, our study tests the effects of customer verbal aggression on emotional dissonance, emotional exhaustion, and job outcomes such as service recovery performance, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions.
Second, it has been observed that there is little empirical research concerning emotional labor in the hospitality management and marketing literatures (Chu and Murrmann, 2006; Kim, 2008). Emotional dissonance is the main component of emotional labor regarding its effects on burnout/emotional exhaustion and negative health and job outcomes (Dormann and Zapf, 2004; Zapf, 2002). Therefore, our study also investigates the relationships of emotional dissonance with emotional exhaustion and the aforementioned job outcomes. Finally, the findings of our study may carry important implications for business practice in the hotel industry.
The next section of our article consists of the theoretical background and hypotheses where the conceptual model is shown. Then, we present discussion of the method and findings of our empirical study. We conclude the study with a discussion of and the implications of the empirical findings.
Theoretical background and hypotheses Jobs in the hospitality industry are high-stress vocations (Stamper and Van Dyne, 2003) and produce burnout (Karatepe and Uludag, 2007; Vallen, 1993). Specifically, Godbey (1993) argues that the availability of behaviors associated with feelings of being rushed may amplify hospitality employees’ job stress. Hutchinson et al. (1997) also discuss that the availability of job insecurity may heighten hospitality managers’ and employees’ job stress. In a study conducted with hotel employees in Canada, role ambiguity has been found to be the major stressor, followed by low decision-latitude and workload (Zohar, 1994). Law et al. (1995) report that management and management behavior has been perceived as the main source of stress among frontline employees in the Australian tourism attractions. In another study, it has been shown that variables such as too much work, misuse of time by other people, being undervalued, inadequate feedback, and lack of consultation intensify both front office and housekeeping employees’ job stress (Faulkner and Patiar, 1997).
It has been observed in a past study that conflicts inherent in food service managers’ role increase burnout (Krone et al., 1989). The results of another study have illustrated that the relative frequency of serving demanding guests increases emotional exhaustion among frontline hotel employees in New Zealand (Ledgerwood et al., 1998). In a study conducted with kitchen chefs, it has been reported that occupational stress factors such as poor communication, threats of violence at work, bullying at work, repetitive work, boring work, poor fixtures and fitting, workload, and being short-staffed have significant positive associations with psychological strain (Murray-Gibbons and Gibbons, 2007). According to the findings of another study, job stress aggravates frontline employees’ burnout in both restaurant and hotel/motel settings (Gill et al., 2006). Karatepe and Uludag (2007) have found that frontline hotel employees in Northern Cyprus experience emotional exhaustion due to a number of difficulties between work and family roles.
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An observation that can be made using the aforementioned studies is that empirical evidence, which pertains to customer verbal aggression and its relationships with emotional dissonance, emotional exhaustion, and job outcomes, still remains scanty. The conceptual model in Figure 1, which addresses such a gap, is presented below.
Our model contends that frontline employees who are confronted with customer verbal aggression experience emotional dissonance and are emotionally exhausted. In addition, such employees display negative outcomes such as poor service recovery performance, job dissatisfaction, and turnover intentions. According to the model, emotional dissonance exacerbates emotional exhaustion, undermines service recovery performance, erodes job satisfaction, and escalates turnover intentions. Similarly, our model posits that emotional exhaustion results in the abovementioned negative performance and affective outcomes. Consistent with the other empirical studies in the extant literature (e.g. Brotheridge and Lee, 2002; Grandey and Cropanzano, 1999; Karatepe et al., 2008; Yavas et al., 2008), the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory provides useful guidelines to develop the aforesaid relationships.
As demonstrated in Figure 1, our study controls for demographic variables such as age, gender, education, organizational tenure, and marital status. This approach is congruent with the other empirical studies in the extant literature, because such control variables may significantly affect the study constructs and confound the hypothesized relationships (e.g. Babakus et al., 2003; Karatepe and Uludag, 2007; Liang and Hsieh, 2008; Yavas et al., 2008). Consequently, examining them as control variables provides us with a rigorous test of the hypothesized linkages.
Customer verbal aggression, emotional dissonance, and emotional exhaustion According to our model in Figure 1, frontline employees who are confronted with verbal aggressive behaviors of customers experience emotional dissonance. “The customer is
Figure 1. Conceptual model
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always right” philosophy in many service organizations requires frontline employees to behave towards customers in a friendly and courteous way even in the face of verbal aggression (Boyd, 2002; Yagil, 2008). It seems that customer verbal aggression is inherent in frontline service jobs (Grandey et al., 2002; Harris and Reynolds, 2003; Yagil, 2008). Under these circumstances, such employees are supposed to control their attitudes and behaviors towards verbally aggressive customers and express unfelt emotions in the workplace.
The COR theory also provides a useful framework for the relationship between the two constructs. According to the COR theory, resources are defined as “those objects, personal characteristics, conditions, or energies that are valued by the individual or that serve as a means for attainment of these objects, personal characteristics, conditions, or energies” (Hobfoll, 1989, p. 516). The COR theory contends that individuals seek to acquire, maintain and preserve certain resources. Frontline employees lose their scarce resources such as energy while coping with difficulties stemming from customer verbal aggression. Customer verbal aggression drains these resources and, as a result, fewer resources are left for coping with emotional dissonance (see Grandey and Cropanzano, 1999). Accordingly, customer verbal aggression should lead to emotional dissonance. Empirically, Dormann and Zapf (2004) reported that customer verbal aggression was significantly and positively associated with emotional dissonance. It was found that frontline employees in the hospitality industry of the UK experienced emotional dissonance due to dysfunctional customer behaviors (Harris and Reynolds, 2003). Recently, Reynolds and Harris (2006) also observed that frontline employees in various restaurants of the United Kingdom expressed emotions that they did not genuinely feel, when they were faced with abuse and mistreatment by customers.
Based on the preceding information, we propose the following hypothesis:
H1. Frontline employees’ perceptions of customer verbal aggression will have a significant positive impact on their emotional dissonance.
Figure 1 demonstrates that both customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance escalate frontline employees’ emotional exhaustion. As mentioned above, customer verbal aggression seems to be one of the unavoidable aspects of frontline service jobs. This is also valid for emotional dissonance, since frontline employees are required to display emotions, which are not genuinely felt in the particular service encounter (Zapf, 2002). Consequently, frontline employees who are supposed to serve verbally aggressive customers and are required to manage their emotions experience emotional exhaustion.
The COR theory states “. . . resource loss is disproportionately more salient than resource gain” (Hobfoll, 2001, p. 343). This theoretical underpinning can be used for explaining the relationships of customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance with emotional exhaustion. That is, frontline hotel employees invest their scarce resources in coping with verbally aggressive customers and emotional dissonance expecting that they will receive positive outcomes in return. However, such employees may not always be successful in coping with them in the workplace. Consequently, if they lose their resources in this process, they experience emotional exhaustion. Under these circumstances, frontline employees are faced with emotional exhaustion due to customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance.
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In empirical terms, it was shown that verbal aggressive behaviors of visitors intensified health care employees’ emotional exhaustion in the UK (Winstanley and Whittington, 2002). In a study among trolley car drivers in The Netherlands, it was found that aggressive behaviors of passengers (quarrel among customers, verbal and physical assault) resulted in emotional exhaustion (Van Dierendonck and Mevissen, 2002). According to the findings of another empirical study, customer verbal abuse was reported to be more frequent than supervisor or coworker verbal abuse and was significantly and positively related to emotional exhaustion (Grandey et al., 2007). In addition, using a sample of frontline employees in different service settings in Israel, Ben-Zur and Yagil (2005) demonstrated that customer aggression amplified emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, there are empirical studies to indicate that emotional dissonance intensifies burnout/emotional exhaustion. For example, Heuven and Bakker (2003) illustrated that emotional dissonance increased Dutch cabin attendants’ emotional exhaustion. Dormann and Zapf (2004) reported that customer verbal aggression was positively associated with emotional exhaustion among employees in different service occupations in Germany. Cheung and Tang (2007) found that emotional dissonance heightened Chinese human service employees’ burnout.
Therefore, we propose the following hypotheses:
H2a. Frontline employees’ perceptions of customer verbal aggression will have a significant positive impact on their emotional exhaustion.
H2b. Frontline employees’ perceptions of emotional dissonance will have a significant positive impact on their emotional exhaustion.
Customer verbal aggression, emotional dissonance, and job outcomes As depicted in Figure 1, customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance impact service recovery performance, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions deleteriously. That is, frontline employees who are confronted with verbally aggressive customers and experience emotional dissonance cannot resolve customers’ complaints effectively, are dissatisfied with their jobs, and display turnover intentions.
According to the COR theory, “. . . excessive demands and/or insufficient resources within a particular role domain or between domains can result in negative affective and dysfunctional behaviors” (Shaffer et al., 2001, p. 100). Such a statement provides guidance for developing the relationships of customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance with the attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Broadly speaking, frontline hotel employees are susceptible to elevated levels of stress and work in an environment that has very limited resources such as insufficient social support and lack of training (Iverson and Deery, 1997; Karatepe and Kilic, 2007). Such employees having inadequate resources in the workplace cannot cope with stress emanating from customers’ interactions with them and emotional dissonance. Under these circumstances, they are not able to resolve complaints to the satisfaction of customers. Customers who display verbal aggression make frontline employees become dissatisfied with the job and think of leaving the organization. In addition, frontline employees displaying unfelt emotions in the service encounter are incapable of having effective service recovery performance, are dissatisfied with their jobs, and display turnover intentions.
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Although limited in number, there are both conceptual and empirical studies to provide support for the effects of customer verbal aggression on job outcomes. For example, it has been found in eight hospitals in Turkey that nurses who are confronted with verbal aggression by patients, patients’ relatives, colleagues, physician, and other hospital personnel report decreased job performance and think of leaving nursing (Celik et al., 2007). It has been shown that customer verbal aggression has a detrimental impact on job satisfaction (Boyd, 2002). Yagil (2008) also persuasively discusses the contention that frontline employees who do not have adequate power to control their work environment and have to work with potential verbally aggressive customers may be willing to leave their organization.
There are also both conceptual and empirical studies regarding the effects of emotional dissonance on job outcomes. Specifically, it has been argued that failure to meet organizational display rules will result in poor performance (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993). Morris and Feldman (1997) have demonstrated that emotional dissonance has a detrimental effect on service employees’ job satisfaction. The findings of another study have reported a significant negative relationship between emotional dissonance and job satisfaction among call center employees in Australia (Lewig and Dollard, 2003). Giardini and Frese (2006) have shown a similar finding among service employees in the German clothing retail business. Rupp et al. (2007) also discuss the suggestion that emotional dissonance leads to negative outcomes such as poor performance, job dissatisfaction, and turnover intentions.
Thus, we propose the following hypotheses:
H3. Frontline employees’ perceptions of customer verbal aggression will have a significant negative impact on their (a) service recovery performance, (b) job satisfaction, and a significant positive impact on their (c) turnover intentions.
H4. Frontline employees’ perceptions of emotional dissonance will have a significant negative impact on their (a) service recovery performance, (b) job satisfaction, and a significant positive impact on their (c) turnover intentions.
Emotional exhaustion and job outcomes The hypotheses illustrated in our model refer to the impacts of emotional exhaustion on service recovery performance, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. The COR theory also provides useful guidelines for such relationships. Once employees find that they lose their scarce resources or face such a threat, they experience emotional exhaustion. Consequently, employees have negative job outcomes as a result of resource loss and emotional exhaustion (Lee and Ashforth, 1996).
There is empirical evidence to support the relationships of emotional exhaustion with job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Specifically, Morris and Feldman (1997) reported that emotional exhaustion reduced job satisfaction. Karatepe (2006) found evidence in Turkish banks that frontline employees were dissatisfied with their jobs and had turnover intentions due to emotional exhaustion. Karatepe and Uludag (2007) also reported similar findings. However, the individual empirical studies have produced inconsistent evidence regarding the relationships between emotional exhaustion and job performance/service recovery performance. For instance, Cropanzano et al. (2003) showed that employees’ job performance deteriorated due to emotional exhaustion. Bakker et al. (2004) reported that exhaustion alleviated job
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performance for a sample of employees in different industries of the Netherlands. Karatepe (2006) found no significant relationship between emotional exhaustion and service recovery performance. In a very recent study of frontline hotel employees in Turkey, emotional exhaustion exerted a significant positive impact on turnover intentions, but did not significantly influence job performance (Yavas et al., 2008).
Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:
H5. Frontline employees’ perceptions of emotional exhaustion will have a significant negative impact on their (a) service recovery performance, (b) job satisfaction, and a significant positive impact on their (c) turnover intentions.
Method Sample and procedure Judgmental sampling, which refers to “picking cases that are judged to be typical of the population in which we are interested, assuming that errors of judgment in the selection will tend to counterbalance one another” (Judd et al., 1991, p. 136), was used to determine the sample of our study. Accordingly, data were obtained from a judgmental sample of full-time frontline employees (e.g. front desk agents, concierges, food servers, bell attendants, and door attendants) in the five- and four-star hotels of Northern Cyprus, which is a small island destination. As one of the largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Cyprus covers an area of about 3,500 square miles and the Northern part of the island has a population of 222,442 (State Planning Organization, 2006). The tourism and hospitality industry is designated as the preeminent industry for the Northern Cyprus economy. However, this industry has been confronted with a plethora of problems for a long time, including seasonality and low occupancy rates, poor service quality, limited qualified staff, pollution, and inadequate infrastructure (Akis and Warner, 1994; Altinay and Bowen, 2006; Karatepe and Uludag, 2007; Kilic and Okumus, 2005). In addition, frontline employees are susceptible to many problems in the workplace, including low pay, excessive workload, long work hours, irregular and inflexible work schedules, and lack of job resources (e.g. Karatepe and Kilic, 2007; Karatepe and Uludag, 2008). It is obvious that there is a dearth of contemporary human resources managerial practices in the Northern Cyprus hotel industry (Haktanir, 2006; Karatepe and Kilic, 2007).
At the time of our study, the research location had seven five-star and six four-star hotels and the total bed capacity in these hotels was 5,228 (Statistical Yearbook of Tourism, 2006). The ownership structures of the hotels ranged from chain hotels to independently/family-owned and -operated hotels. The research team was able to receive permission for data collection from the managements of six five-star and three four-star hotels. The research team personally distributed a total number of 279 questionnaires to frontline hotel employees. Frontline hotel employees were assured of confidentiality and self-administered the questionnaires anonymously. According to the instructions of the relevant hotel managers, 205 questionnaires were distributed to frontline employees in five-star hotels, while the rest were distributed to those in four-star hotels. Of the 279 questionnaires distributed, 204 were retrieved, yielding a response rate of 73.1 per cent.
Of the respondents 48 percent were between the ages of 18-27, 37 percent between the ages of 28-37, and the rest were older than 37. The majority of the respondents (67 percent) were male. A total 8 percent of the respondents had primary school education,
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while a little over one-fifth of the respondents had secondary and high school education. Of the respondents 39 percent had four-year college degrees, while 30 percent had two-year college degrees. The rest had graduate degrees. One-fourth of the respondents had tenures below one year. The majority of the respondents (53 percent) had tenures of between one and five years. The rest had tenures of more than five years. A total 66 percent of the respondents were single or divorced and the rest were married. In addition, 43 percent of the respondents were from the independently/family-owned and – operated hotels and 57 percent from the chain hotels.
Independent-samples t-tests ( p , 0.01) and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Scheffe tests ( p , 0.01) were employed to examine differences among respondents in terms of demographic variables with respect to the study variables. According to the results of ANOVA, there were significant differences among respondents in terms of education with respect to emotional exhaustion, service recovery performance, and job satisfaction. A significant difference among respondents in terms of organizational tenure with respect to service recovery performance was also observed. However, the results of the Scheffe tests did not produce any significant mean differences within different education and organizational tenure groups concerning the abovementioned variables. In addition, the rest of the findings were not significant.
Measurement The scale items used in our study were obtained from empirical studies in the extant literature. Customer verbal aggression was measured via five (5) items from Dormann and Zapf (2004). Eleven (11) items from Chu and Murrmann (2006) were used to operationalize emotional dissonance. Emotional exhaustion was measured using eight (8) items from the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach and Jackson, 1981). Service recovery performance was measured using five (5) items from Boshoff and Allen (2000). Job satisfaction was operationalized using eight (8) items from Hartline and Ferrell (1996). Three (3) items from Singh et al. (1996) were used to measure turnover intentions. Responses to the items on customer verbal aggression were recorded on five-point scales ranging from (5 ¼ absolutely true) to (1 ¼ not at all true). Responses to the items in emotional dissonance, emotional exhaustion, service recovery performance, and turnover intentions items were elicited on five-point scales ranging from (5 ¼ strongly agree) to (1 ¼ strongly disagree). In addition, responses to the job satisfaction items were rated on five-point scales ranging from (5 ¼ extremely satisfied ) to (1 ¼ extremely dissatisfied ). Higher scores indicated higher customer verbal aggression, emotional exhaustion, service recovery performance, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. After the negatively worded items on emotional dissonance had been reverse scored, higher scores indicated higher emotional dissonance.
We controlled for age, gender, education, organizational tenure, and marital status. Age, education, and organizational tenure were measured using five-point scales. Gender was recorded as a dichotomous variable (0 ¼ male and 1 ¼ female). Marital status was also recorded as a dichotomous variable (0 ¼ single or divorced and 1 ¼ married).
The survey instrument was originally prepared in English and then translated into Turkish via the back-translation method (Parameswaran and Yaprak, 1987). The
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instrument was tested with a pilot sample of 20 frontline employees. No problems were detected as a result of the pilot study.
Results Measurement results We employed a series of confirmatory factor analysis to provide support for the issues of dimensionality, convergent and discriminant validity (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988). Five items were deleted as a result of the initial confirmatory factor analysis. Specifically, two items with nonsignificant t-values and three items with low standardized factor loadings ( , 0.30) in the emotional dissonance construct were removed from further analysis. The scale items retained as well as the items dropped during confirmatory factor analysis and their sources are shown in the Appendix. The results of the final confirmatory factor analysis were as follows: x 2 ¼ 981:05, df ¼ 545; GFI [Goodness of fit index] ¼ 0.78; AGFI [Adjusted goodness of fit index] ¼ 0.75; NFI [Normed fit index] ¼ 0.75; NNFI [Non-normed fit index] ¼ 0.85; CFI [Comparative fit index] ¼ 0.86; RMSEA [Root mean square error of approximation] ¼ 0.063; SRMR [Standardized root mean square residual] ¼ 0.079. Although these results produced low fit statistics, the magnitudes of the standardized factor loadings ranged from 0.34 to 0.91 and all t-values were significant. Of the 35 items, 18 had loadings greater than 0.70. Consequently, the findings associated with the magnitudes of the loadings and their significant t-values provided evidence of convergent validity (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988).
Discriminant validity was evaluated based on a series of x 2 difference tests using measures of each pair of constructs. In particular, a two-dimensional model for each pair of constructs was first fit, and then items representing each construct were forced into a single-factor solution. The x 2 difference test produced a significant result for each pair of measures. Thus, imposing a single factor solution on the two sets of items representing different constructs demonstrated a significant deterioration of the model fit. These results provided evidence of discriminant validity (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988).
In order to check and test common method bias, we conducted Harman’s single-factor test via confirmatory factor analysis (Podsakoff et al., 2003). This test is based on the assumption that common method bias is a serious problem when a single latent factor will account for the majority of the covariance among the measures (Podsakoff et al., 2003). The results of the single-factor test demonstrate that 35 items do not load on a single-factor and do not account for the majority of the covariance among the measures. When compared with that of the six-factor model reported above, the results of fit statistics for a single-factor test were unacceptable (x 2 ¼ 3619:76, df ¼ 560; GFI ¼ 0:50; AGFI ¼ 0:43; NFI ¼ 0:35; NNFI ¼ 0:37; CFI ¼ 0:40; RMSEA ¼ 0:164; SRMR ¼ 0:14). The abovementioned results indicate that common method bias is not a serious problem in our study.
Following the suggestion made by Armstrong and Overton (1977), we also controlled for non-response bias. Using independent-samples t-tests (p , 0:01), we examined differences between early (62 percent) and late (38 percent) respondents with respect to the study constructs. The results demonstrated a significant difference between early and late respondents in terms of job satisfaction. On the other hand, the results showed no significant differences between early and late respondents in terms
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of the rest of the study constructs. Consequently, the results suggest that non-response bias may not be a critical issue in our study.
Composite scores for each perceptual variable were computed by averaging items representing that particular variable. The results regarding means, standard deviations, and correlations of study and control variables are presented in Table I. According to Table I, Cronbach’s alphas for study variables were deemed acceptable, since they were greater than the commonly accepted cut-off value of 0.70.
Test of hypotheses The correlation matrix in Table I was used as input to LISREL 8.30 to test the hypotheses via path analysis (Jöreskog and Sörbom, 1996). The results of path analysis demonstrated that none of the control variables significantly affected emotional dissonance, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. Several control variables were found to be significantly related to customer verbal aggression, emotional exhaustion, and service recovery performance. Therefore, the model was retested by constraining the nonsignificant path coefficients of the control variables to “0” on model variables. The findings in Table II indicated that the model fit the data well (x 2 ¼ 17:00 df ¼ 10; p ¼ 0:07; GFI ¼ 0:98; AGFI ¼ 0:93; NFI ¼ 0:94; NNFI ¼ 0:91; CFI ¼ 0:97; RMSEA ¼ 0:059; SRMR ¼ 0:047). As reported in Table II, the results accounted for 1 percent of the variance in customer verbal aggression, 13 percent in emotional dissonance, 18 percent in emotional exhaustion, 15 percent in service recovery performance, 9 percent in job satisfaction, and 43 percent in turnover intentions.
The finding that customer verbal aggression had a significant positive effect on emotional dissonance was consistent with H1. The results, which demonstrated that customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance had significant positive impacts on emotional exhaustion, provided empirical support for H2a and H2b. In addition, the results illustrated that customer verbal aggression did not significantly and negatively influence service recovery performance and job satisfaction. H3a and H3b were therefore not supported. On the contrary, customer verbal aggression was found to be significantly and positively related to turnover intentions. H3c was therefore supported. Similarly, the findings demonstrated that emotional dissonance exerted no significant effects on service recovery performance and job satisfaction. Such findings did not provide any empirical support for H4a and H4b. However, the finding that emotional dissonance was significantly and positively related to turnover intentions was in support of H4c.
The results in Table II showed that emotional exhaustion depicted significant and negative relationships with service recovery performance and job satisfaction. H5a and H5b were therefore supported. Emotional exhaustion was also found to significantly and positively influence turnover intentions. Such a finding supported H5c. The significant hypothesized relationships are depicted in Figure 2.
As can be observed in Table II, organizational tenure did not significantly influence customer verbal aggression. However, education was significantly and positively related to service recovery performance, while organizational tenure significantly and negatively impacted service recovery performance. Additionally, education significantly and negatively affected emotional exhaustion.
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v ic
e re
co v
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0 .1
1 5
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0 3
0 .2
2 0
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2 0 .2
2 9
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2 0 .0
8 5
2 0 .0
8 7
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1 .0
0 0
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(J S
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) 0 .0
0 4
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4 2 .0
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5 4 .0
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5 2 .8
7 S
ta n
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0 .8
5 0 .4
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8 0 .9
7 0 .8
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9 0 .6
1 0 .8
4 1 .1
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d ic
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re . G
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= m
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). M
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). *
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it h
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y a st
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k s
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n o t
si g
n ifi
ca n
t
Table I. Means, standard deviations, correlations of study variables, and Cronbach’s alpha (n ¼ 204)
IJCHM 21,6
724
Discussion Based on data collected from frontline hotel employees in a developing small island destination, Northern Cyprus, the present empirical investigation extends our understanding pertaining to the consequences of customer verbal aggression. Specifically, we developed and tested a model that investigated the effects of customer verbal aggression on emotional dissonance, emotional exhaustion, and three job outcomes, which consisted of service recovery performance, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. Consequently, several useful findings are of note.
In general, the results are encouraging and demonstrate that the COR theory provides useful guidelines for studying the relationships depicted in the conceptual model. When the consequences of customer verbal aggression are assessed, various results come out. Specifically, the result that emotional dissonance is among the viable consequences of customer verbal aggression is in line with the COR theory (Grandey and Cropanzano, 1999; Hobfoll, 2001) and the other empirical research (e.g. Harris and Reynolds, 2003). That is, employees spend their limited resources for managing verbally aggressive customers in the service encounter. However, they have fewer resources left for handling emotional dissonance. Under these circumstances, such
Control variables and hypotheses Standardized estimate t-value R 2
Organizational tenure ! CVA 0.12 1.71 0.01 CVA ! ED 0.36 5.47 * 0.13 Education ! EEXHAUST 20.22 23.46 * 0.18 CVA ! EEXHAUST 0.25 3.61 *
ED ! EEXHAUST 0.19 2.72 *
Education ! SERPERF 0.15 2.20 * 0.15 Organizational tenure ! SERPERF 20.17 22.62 *
CVA ! SERPERF 20.01 20.17 ED ! SERPERF 0.06 0.87 EEXHAUST ! SERPERF 20.27 23.71 *
CVA ! JSAT 20.01 20.09 0.09 ED ! JSAT 0.00 20.06 EEXHAUST ! JSAT 20.30 24.12 *
CVA ! TINT 0.14 2.37 * 0.43 ED ! TINT 0.16 2.82 *
EEXHAUST ! TINT 0.52 9.11 *
Model fit statistics: x
2 ¼ 17.00 df ¼ 10; p ¼ 0:07; GFI ¼ 0.98; AGFI ¼ 0:93; NFI ¼ 0:94; NNFI ¼ 0:91; CFI ¼ 0:97;
RMSEA ¼ 0:059; SRMR ¼ 0:047
Notes: Nonsignificant paths from control variables to model constructs were constrained to “0” on the basis of the initial results of the path analysis. Age, education, and organizational tenure were measured using five-point scales. Higher scores indicated older age, more educated, and longer tenure. Gender was coded as a dichotomous variable (0 ¼ male and 1 ¼ female). Marital status was also coded as a dichotomous variable (0 ¼ single or divorced and 1 ¼ married). CVA ¼ Customer verbal aggression; ED ¼ Emotional dissonance; EEXHAUST ¼ Emotional exhaustion; SERPERF ¼ Service recovery performance; JSAT ¼ Job satisfaction; TINT ¼ Turnover intentions; GFI ¼ Goodness of fit index; AGFI ¼ Adjusted goodness of fit index; NFI ¼ Normed fit index; NNFI ¼ Non-normed fit index; CFI ¼ Comparative fit index; RMSEA ¼ Root mean square error of approximation; SRMR ¼ Standardized root mean square residual. * The t-values demonstrate a statistically significant relationship at the 0.05 level. The other t-values without any asterisks are not significant
Table II. Test of hypotheses
Outcomes of customer verbal
aggression
725
employees are supposed to express unfelt emotions in the service encounter due to customer verbal aggression and cannot manage problems associated with emotional dissonance.
As predicted by the COR theory (Hobfoll, 2001) and consonant with recent empirical studies (Ben-Zur and Yagil, 2005; Grandey et al., 2007), customer verbal aggression should lead to emotional exhaustion. This is supported by our findings. It also has been demonstrated in our study that employees experience emotional exhaustion due to the incongruence between their felt and displayed emotions in the service encounter. Such a finding is in accordance with the COR theory (Hobfoll, 2001; Lee and Ashforth, 1996) and corroborates that of Heuven and Bakker (2003). When frontline employees do not receive the anticipated returns as a result of investment of their scarce resources in the management of customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance, they lose such resources and are faced with emotional exhaustion.
According to the COR theory, excessive job demands within a particular role lead to negative attitudinal outcomes (Shaffer et al., 2001). Consistent with this theoretical framework and the other studies (Rupp et al., 2007; Yagil, 2008), both customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance give rise to turnover intentions. That is, frontline employees who cannot cope with verbally aggressive customers and emotional dissonance in the workplace try to preserve their limited resources by displaying turnover intentions. Such findings are important, since turnover intentions result in turnover, which is a prevalent hassle in the hotel industry. On the other hand, the results concerning the effects of customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance on service recovery performance and job satisfaction are not significant. These results are not in line with the COR theory (Shaffer et al., 2001; Yavas et al., 2008) and the other studies (Celik et al., 2007; Rupp et al., 2007; Yagil, 2008). As discussed before, customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance seem to be among the unavoidable aspects of frontline service jobs. Accordingly, such findings might be attributed to the
Figure 2. Revised model
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fact that frontline employees are expected to serve customers in a friendly and polite manner even in the event of customer verbal aggression and display unfelt emotions to be consistent with organizational desired emotions. Thus, being confronted with customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance does not necessarily impact frontline employees’ service recovery efforts and their satisfaction with the job. However, failure to demonstrate significant negative effects of customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance on service recovery performance and job satisfaction should not be considered definitive. Using multiple sources of assessment regarding frontline employees’ service recovery performance and job satisfaction might have produced supporting results for the COR theory.
When the effects of emotional exhaustion on job outcomes are evaluated, a number of useful findings emerge from our empirical investigation. Concordant with the COR theory (Lee and Ashforth, 1996; Yavas et al., 2008) and the other studies (Cropanzano et al., 2003; Karatepe and Uludag, 2007), emotional exhaustion exerts detrimental effects on service recovery performance, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. As the COR theory contends, employees display negative performance and affective consequences as a result of resource loss and emotional exhaustion. This is not surprising, since emotionally exhausted employees are devoid of the necessary additional resources to demonstrate positive attitudinal and behavioral outcomes.
Management implications There are useful management implications surfacing from the findings of our study. Customer verbal aggression appears to be one of the inevitable aspects of frontline service jobs and hotel managers should take actions, which pertain to practical coping mechanisms. First, hotel managers are supposed to define a policy. Such a policy based on knowing customer rights may consist of specific information about cut-off points, minimums and maximums allowed while dealing with verbally aggressive customers (see Bailey, 1994). This should be accompanied by written procedures. For example, having two frontline employees in the service encounter might be a potential remedy to deal more effectively with customers showing aggressive behaviors, since such customers are less likely to be offensive, if faced with two members of the organization. In addition, empowerment appears to be an important weapon in managing such customers and sends powerful signals to employees that the hotel management has trust in them. Therefore, hotel managers could arrange training programs to teach their employees about how they may use empowerment while dealing with verbally aggressive customers. Second, managers and employees should audit complaints and record the incidents of customer verbal aggression and the actions taken by employees to deal with them. Such incidences and actions could also be used as case studies in training programs to have long-term control and prevention plans (see Reynolds and Harris, 2006). The key solution here is a change in staff attitude and perception while the contents of such training schemes need to emphasize prevention rather than reaction.
If hotel managers want their frontline employees to deliver services with a friendly smile or display not genuinely felt emotions at all times, then they should find the relevant panacea to alleviate emotional exhaustion that emotional dissonance exacerbates. For example, mentors could be employed to help employees handle problems arising from emotional dissonance. This is important, because emotional
Outcomes of customer verbal
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dissonance seems to be unavoidable in frontline service jobs. This practice may also reduce their emotional exhaustion. In addition, recruiting and selecting the most appropriate individuals for frontline service jobs should be based on the notion that there is a fit between the demands of the job and the employee. When the demands of the job are incongruent with employees’ abilities, then such employees cannot cope with difficulties stemming from customer verbal aggression, emotional dissonance, and exhaustion.
Limitations and avenues for future research As with all empirical studies, there are several limitations to our study and useful implications for further research remain. First, our empirical investigation was cross-sectional and causal inferences among the study variables could not be drawn. Therefore, longitudinal designs in future research would be beneficial in drawing causal inferences among the study variables depicted in our model. Second, we tested our hypotheses using self-report data. Since this was susceptible to common method bias, we conducted Harman’s single-factor test to assess this potential threat. Our results indicate that common method bias is not a critical problem in this study. However, in future studies, using multiple sources for data collection (e.g. supervisors’ or customers’ assessment of frontline employee service recovery performance) would be helpful for minimizing this problem. In this study, no moderator was used. Therefore, it would be useful for incorporating personality variables such as proactive personality and intrinsic motivation into the study model to understand whether they could moderate the impacts of customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance on emotional exhaustion and the effects of customer verbal aggression, emotional dissonance, and exhaustion on job outcomes. Lastly, our sample size is relatively small. Thus, using larger sample sizes in future studies in Northern Cyprus as well as in the hotel industries of similar small island destinations would be fruitful.
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Appendix. Scale items and sources Customer verbal aggression (Dormann and Zapf, 2004)
. Customers often shout at us.
. Customers personally attack us verbally.
. Customers are always complaining about us.
. Customers get angry at us even over minor matters.
. Some customers argue all the time.
Emotional dissonance (Chu and Murrmann, 2006) . I fake a good mood when interacting with customers.a
. I fake the emotions I show when dealing with customers.
. I put on a mask in order to express the right emotions for my job.
. The emotions I show to customers match what I truly feel.a, b
. I behave in a way that differs from how I really feel.
. I put on an act in order to deal with customers in an appropriate way.
. My interactions with customers are very robotic.
. I display emotions that I am not actually feeling. a
. I have to cover up my true feelings when dealing with customers.
. I actually feel the emotions that I need to show to do my job well. a, b
. I show the same feelings to customers that I feel inside. a, b
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Emotional exhaustion (Maslach and Jackson, 1981) . I feel emotionally drained from my work. . I feel used up at the end of the workday. . I feel fatigued when I get up in the morning and have to face another day on the job. . Working with people all day is really a strain for me. . I feel burned out from my work. . I feel frustrated by my job. . I feel I am working too hard on my job. . I feel like I am at the end of my rope.
Service recovery performance (Boshoff and Allen, 2000) . Considering all the things I do, I handle dissatisfied customers quite well. . I do not mind dealing with complaining customers. . No customer I deal with leaves with problems unresolved. . Satisfying complaining customers is a great thrill to me. . Complaining customers I have dealt with in the past are among today’s most loyal
customers.
Job satisfaction (Hartline and Ferrell, 1996) . My overall job. . My fellow workers. . My supervisor(s). . This hotel’s policies. . The support provided by this hotel. . My salary. . The opportunities for advancement with this hotel. . This hotel’s customers.
Turnover intentions (Singh et al., 1996) . It is likely that I will actively look for a new job next year. . I often think about quitting. . I will probably look for a new job next year.
Notes: a Dropped during confirmatory factor analysis; b Reverse-scored.
Corresponding author Osman M. Karatepe can be contacted at: osman.karatepe@emu.edu.tr
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