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This study investigated the influence of ambiguous customer expectations and customer demandingness, which reflect hindrance and challenge demands, on the boundary spanning behaviors (BSBs) of frontline bank employees (FBEs) through person-job fit and work engagement. It also examined the moderating effect of customer stewardship between job demands and work engagement.

Data of 296 FBEs in the retail banking industry in the Republic of Korea were collected through an online survey and analyzed.

Ambiguous customer expectations acted as hindrance demands and negatively affected FBEs' psychological process. Additionally, customer demandingness positively affected FBEs' psychological process as challenge demands. Moreover, person-job fit and work engagement improved the BSBs of FBEs as a psychological motivation process. Lastly, customer stewardship buffered the negative influence of ambiguous customer expectations on work engagement while strengthening the positive influence of customer demandingness on work engagement.

This study contributes to the marketing literature by presenting customer-related characteristics influencing the BSBs of FBEs and exploring the psychological response processes. First, this study presents empirical evidence that ambiguous customer expectations and customer demandingness play the role of hindrance and challenge demands, respectively. Second, it confirms that customer-related characteristics affect the BSBs of FBEs through psychological processes. Finally, it enriches the authors' understanding of customer stewardship as a job resource by exploring the role of customer stewardship in moderating the relationship between different types of job demands and work engagement.

The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of the service orientation on bank-employee behaviors; to empirically examine the moderating role of the productivity orientation in an effort to explain when and why the simultaneous pursuit of the service orientation and the productivity orientation negatively affect the financial service employee psychological empowerment; and to explore any contextual factors that can suppress or facilitate the bank–employee behaviors.

A single cross-sectional descriptive design was used for this study. Purposive sampling was used to identify the respondents who were bank employees in financial-service-sector organizations in South Korea. To analyze the data, a confirmatory-factor analysis (CFA) using LISREL 8.5 was employed. Conditional process modeling was performed to test the moderated mediation and the moderated-mediation hypotheses.

The results showed a significant relationship between the service orientation and the frontline-employee behaviors, thereby establishing the psychological empowerment as an intervening mechanism. The findings also suggest that the moderating role of the productivity orientation weakened the positive effect of the service orientation on the bank-employee psychological empowerment. This research identifies the positive interactive effect of the customer power upon the psychological empowerment of the employee extra-role behavior. The task interdependence enhanced the link between the psychological empowerment and the employee in-role behavior.

The specific service sector that was chosen is retail banking. The cross-sectional nature of the data is considered a limitation; furthermore, the self-reported nature of the completed questionnaires might have resulted in the common method bias. Further research should be conducted to collect longitudinal data from other service sectors to verify the hypothesized relationship. Extensions into other sectors that differ in terms of the customer power degree and the task interdependence level could lead to a contingency framework that shows if and how the hypothesized linkages can be changed according to the contextual factors.

For managers who want or need to pursue the strategic goals of the service orientation and the productivity orientation simultaneously, this study offers useful insights into the management of the strategic dilemmas that stem from service-setting multi-goal pursuits from an employee perspective. Second, the significant positive relationships that were observed between the values of the overt customer power and the extra-role behavior suggest that constraining and influential customer behaviors are likely to produce a structured working environment that encourages the bank-employee extra-role behavior. Third, the results also suggest that the task structure (task interdependence) may influence the employee in-role behavior. Thus, managers should encourage an organizational sense of belonging for their employees and an understanding of the essential nature of the employee work role in terms of a competitive organizational performance.

In banking circumstances, stickiness on product orientation by cutting cost will deteriorate the level of customer service and will then reduce customer revenues. In this case, disgruntled staff and unhappy customers perceive that their interests are being sacrificed in the pursuit of greater productivity. In this situation, revenues may fall faster than the reduction in costs. Thus, it may be proven that the cost of the dual demands from these two orientation types outweigh the benefit. Bank executives may perceive organizational productivity orientation as being an easier and more evident tool to use for reducing cost, especially with the existence of tough competition. Critically, in addition to poor service quality, this study indicates that there is a side effect of productivity orientation practice. Thus, managers should use caution in the concurrent employment of the two types.

This study identified the reason for the negative service outcomes that result from the simultaneous pursuits of the service orientation and the productivity orientation. From an employee perspective, it might be proven that the costs of the dual-service and production-orientation demands may outweigh the benefits. Thus, this proposed research model, in which the frontline autonomy acted as a key mediator and the customer power and the task interdependence were salient moderators, has been shown as crucial in the transmission of the impacts of the service and the quality orientation, and in the blunting of the service-productivity trade-offs that are due to the employee’s perceived multi-goal orientations.

This paper aims to examine the effect of employees’ emotional labor on work engagement and boundary-spanner creativity based on the job demands-resources model from the perspective of salespeople.

To analyze the data, a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling procedure using LISREL 8.5 were used. Next, the conditional process modeling was fitted to test the moderated mediation hypotheses.

The analysis results showed that deep acting has a positive effect on work engagement, whereas surface acting has a negative effect, indicating that work engagement of sales representatives is differently related to each factor of emotional labor. Second, work engagement of salespeople has a positive effect on boundary spanner creativity. Next, entrepreneurship has a moderate effect in the relationship between emotional labor and work engagement with customer stewardship and has a positive moderating effect in the relationship between work engagement and boundary spanner creativity.

Considering the positive effect of boundary spanner creativity on work engagement, it is important to maintain interaction with customers, including adaptive behaviors and customer orientation, as customers’ demand increases. The individual competence and capability of salespeople such as entrepreneurship are directly related to interaction with customers, so when the right strategy is defined for each type of entrepreneurship of salespeople, it will create a positive corporate culture and lead to performance improvement.

Compared with most studies, more direct factors of emotional labor were assessed to detect positive effects in this study. More specifically, when salespeople were forced to fake their feelings, they were more likely to recognize stress or burnout due to emotional dissonance between what they really felt and what they had to express to comply with organizational regulations.

This paper aims to develop a research model that proposes a relationship among customer power, psychological empowerment and voice behavior of frontline employees (FLEs). The model also suggests that managerial openness, as a result of the manager–employee interface, contributes by mediating the effect of customer power on psychological empowerment. As a result of the job characteristic–employee interface, task interdependence is suggested as a moderator in the relationship between psychological empowerment and voice behavior.

To analyze the data, a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling procedure using LISREL 8.5 were used. Next, the conditional process modeling was fitted to test the moderated mediation hypotheses. In this stage, the mediating role of psychological empowerment and the moderating effect of task interdependence voice behavior were tested with bootstrapping methods.

The results showed a significant relationship between customer power and FLEs’ voice behavior, establishing psychological empowerment as an intervening mechanism. Thus, customer power can be a signal of appreciation for passive and job uncontrollability to service employees. The findings also suggested the mediating role of managerial openness, which delivered a negative effect of customer power on the FLEs’ psychological empowerment. Task interdependence enhanced the link between psychological empowerment and voice behavior.

The specific service sector chosen for this study was retail banks. Furthermore, the study was undertaken among the FLEs of banks in South Korea. Having FLEs self-report on managerial openness raises a general concern that those employees with little experience may not have fully understood whether a manager’s current behaviors are open-minded and empowering. Lastly, the perceptions of customer power, psychological empowerment, managerial openness, task interdependence and voice behavior that all came from FLEs naturally raises concerns about the influence of method bias in these results.

The significant negative and indirect relationship observed between the perception of customer power and employees’ voice through managerial openness and employees’ psychological empowerment suggested that the double deviation effect of customer power on employees’ psychological empowerment through the interface between customer and employee (customer power) and manager and employee (managerial openness). This study provides insight into the management of service customer–employee and manager–employee interactions to encourage employee psychological empowerment.

The main emphasis of the model is on the so-called voice behaviors that FLEs exhibit as an overall consequence of various service employee interfaces. The management of FLEs has been extensively discussed in the services marketing literature. However, few research studies have attempted to link and combine the effect of various interfaces to which employees are exposed on employees’ voice behavior. In this study, three interfaces that the FLEs are always exposed to were examined simultaneously: that of the employee and the customer (perceived customer power), the interface of the employee and the manager (managerial openness) and that of the employee and his or her job characteristic (task interdependence).

To reduce costs, many banks have increased customer involvement during the creation and delivery of their products and services. Based on a job demands-resources (JD-R) model, this study tests an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship between perceived customer participation and employee work engagement. Customer orientation (CO) and service employee perceived fit with customers (PCF) moderate this relationship, which eventually affect both the internal and external benefits of service-employee work engagement.

The authors collected survey data from 518 service employees in the South Korean banking and insurance industries and analyzed the data using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results indicate that perceived customer participation (PCP) has a significant inverted U-shape effect on work engagement. Results also suggest that CO and PCF have positive relationships with work engagement. In addition, they moderate the inverted U-shaped relationship between service employee PCP and work engagement, while work engagement positively affects organizational citizenship, job satisfaction and commitment.

The authors empirically identify a curvilinear effect of PCP on work engagement. In doing so, the authors introduce and operationalize the new construct: PCF and suggest PCF and CO as unique job resources for service employees. The authors also examine these constructs as predictors based on a motivational process and as moderators based on a strain (energetic) process.

From a managerial perspective, examining the curvilinear relationships of customer participation and work engagement suggests that front-line employees’ (FLEs’) PCP does not necessarily enhance the economic benefits of productivity gains by using customers as substitutes for portions of employee labor. Another finding with managerial relevance indicates that service employees, who have more CO and PCF, showed more tolerant attitudes toward unnecessary and excessive levels of customer participation and regarded it as a job resource.

This study explains that researchers must consider the positive and negative sides of customer participation simultaneously because frontline employee PCP can be changed depending on the level of participation provided by customers. This study also shows that CO can be assumed as a personal resource and PCF as an environmental resource in the work engagement process.

This study investigated the effects of social capital on frontline bank employee's adaptive selling behavior via the psychological process. Frontline bank employees' positive social relationships enhance their perception of the work environment and encourage work engagement. With the multiple mediation model, both internal and external social capital have direct and indirect influence on the frontline bank employee's adaptive selling behavior.

Data for this study were collected from a cross-sectional sample of retail banking industry in Korea. Specifically, using two-step procedures, employees of financial service or insurance sales department in banks were selected and online survey questionnaires were distributed to them. Data from 330 employees were collected and analyzed.

The results of this study showed how social capital affects frontline bank employees' person–job fit as a cognitive psychological process, leading to work engagement as an emotional psychological process and, in turn, more adaptive selling behavior. Using multiple mediation analysis, the results showed that work engagement on its own exerts a mediating effect on social capital, whereas a person–job fit does not.

This study applied both aspects of the social capital concept by dividing it into internal and external social capital, and exploring each separately. This study examined the influence on psychological processes and behavioral response by distinguishing between the two forms of social capital. Second, this study expands the previous studies by introducing social capital as an antecedent factor of frontline bank employees' adaptive selling behavior. Finally, this study explains how frontline bank employees' relational resources (i.e. social capital) influence their emotional aspect (i.e. work engagement) and cognitive aspect (i.e. person–job fit), which ultimately influence performance-driven behavior (i.e. adaptive selling behavior).

This research showed the importance of hiring frontline bank employees with excellent social capital capabilities. Furthermore, this study underscored the fact that organizations require preparing and providing practical management methods that can improve the social capital of their current frontline employees. Last, organization need to design the job in a way that innately improves frontline employees' social capital. Therefore, these jobs provide many opportunities for frontline bank employees to use their ability to build relationships in their interactions with customers and make practical decisions to achieve job performance.

This study improved our understanding regarding the importance of employees' social capital by revealing the psychological process of how frontline bank employees' social capital affects adaptive selling behavior. Second, this study expands on the literature by introducing internal and external social capital as an antecedent factor affecting the adaptive selling behavior of frontline bank employees. Furthermore, this study advances understanding on the manner in which relational resources of frontline bank employees (i.e. social capital) influence the emotional (i.e. work engagement) as well as the cognitive aspects (i.e. person–job fit), which ultimately influence performance-driven behavior (i.e. adaptive selling behavior).

The aim of this paper is to test how leader–member exchange (LMX) interacts with procedural justice climate to influence three types of employee motivation (i.e. achievement striving motivation, status striving motivation and communion striving motivation). Furthermore, this study empirically examines the indirect effects of LMX on customer loyalty through employee motivation and service orientation.

This study used a matched sample of 188 retail service employees and 376 customers from a large shopping mall in South Korea to test the empirical model. Structural equation modeling (SEM) and bootstrapping method were employed to test a series of proposed hypotheses.

The results show that LMX significantly enhances customer loyalty through two motivational dimensions and service orientation. In particular, this study shows that achievement and status striving motivation are directly related to service orientation, but communion striving motivation does not affect customer-focused service attitude. In addition, procedural justice climate serves as a critical moderator and synergistically interacts with LMX to influence achievement and status striving motivation.

This study offers new insight regarding how managers' roles in both individual (leader–member exchange) and organizational (procedural justice climate) level affect different forms of retail service employee motivation and service orientation, which in turn, result in customer loyalty.

The results suggest that when retail service employees perceive procedural fairness at retail stores, they are more motivated to work hard to complete their assignments and achieve their sales goals in conjunction with leader support. Therefore, managers must provide a clear guideline and procedure regarding salary raises and performance evaluations or engage in thorough discourse on such matters with employees prior to announcements of such decisions. Moreover, as retail service employees interact with customers in the frontline, and how they serve customers plays a key role in creating customer loyalty. Managers should encourage retail service employees to engage in service-oriented behaviors.

The results suggest that LMX facilitates more formal task-related motivation to achieve either tasks or status while it is less related to relationship-building motivation, which is a unique contribution of this study. The results offer better understating of how LMX differentially leads to specific types of employee motivation in the existing literature.

This study aims to employ conservation of resources (COR) theory to explain how customer support, customer power, customer orientation (CO) and product complexity impact frontline employees (FLEs) work engagement.

Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze data collected from 1,620 South Korean insurance salespeople using an on-line survey.

Results show that customer support, customer power and CO will bring more FLEs work engagement, and product complexity negatively dilutes the work engagement gained from customer support.

The results of this study suggest that firms should encourage FLEs to share their experiences and tactics in dealing with customer power and stimulate supportive customer behaviors. Since complex products, particularly financial products, require more explanation and information exchange for customers to understand them, managers might include simulations, videos and role-playing in training programs to show salespeople how to handle customers when attempting to sell these products.

This study investigates the effects of customer cognitive and emotional support on FLEs work engagement and also empirically demonstrates the positive effects of customer power.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how service employee’s perceived customer participation influences beneficial deep acting behaviors among service personnel while dampening the development of the less-beneficial surface acting, which subsequently affects service employees’ work engagement. Specifically, the current research explores how the personal factors of customer orientation (CO) and employee-customer fit interact with the customer participation to ultimately develop either surface – or deep-acting behaviors.

Data for the study were collected from a cross-sectional sample of retail bank and insurance companies in South Korea. Questionnaires were distributed to 750 frontline employees of several banks and insurance companies. Of these, 518 questionnaires were used for further analysis.

The results indicate that perceived customer participation exhibits the predicted negative influence on surface acting as well as the positive effect on deep acting. Using the hierarchical moderated regression approach, the interaction effect of customer participation and CO on the service employees’ surface acting was found. Finally, the positive moderating effect of employee’s perceived fit with customers in the relationship between perceived customer participation and employees’ deep acting was supported.

First, the specific service sectors chosen for this study are retail banking and insurance. Furthermore, the study was conducted among the frontline employees of banks and insurance companies in South Korea. Second, the study used single-source data, which are prone to common method variance. While the survey instrument was structured carefully with this in mind and the results suggested that method bias may not have been an issue in this study, this problem can best be avoided by collecting data from multiple sources. Third, this study is limited by its cross-sectional approach. The cross-sectional nature of the present study does not allow causal inferences.

This study provides a practical implication for managers to understand the importance of customer participation for relieving the negative effects of employee emotional labor. From a practitioner standpoint, examining the relationship between customer participation and emotional labor is of great importance given the benefits and costs associated with managing customer participation. Thus, managers should magnify the positive effect of perceived customer participation on emotional labor by increasing frontline employees’ understanding of customer participation. Second, the finding that CO plays a more critical role in the reduction of surface acting has important managerial implications. The recruitment and selection of frontline employees should incorporate an assessment of the level of CO. The results of this study strongly suggest that service organizations can greatly benefit from hiring individuals with a higher CO for frontline positions because CO signals a better job-person fit.

The present study is the first to link employees’ perceived customer participation with their attempts at emotional labor at work and to study how those attempts lead to work engagement. This research also shows that understanding how service employees’ CO moderates the effects of customer participation on beneficial deep acting and on destructive surface acting is important in that emotional labor is a potential driver of customers’ emotional states and subsequent assessments of service interaction. A third contribution of this study is the use of a new concept, which will be called person-customer fit (PCF), to reflect employees’ perceived fit with customers. Although many researchers have investigated the relationship between customers and frontline employees, the research has primarily focussed on the employees’ perceived fit with their organization and members of the organization and overlooked the importance of PCF.

Frontline employee authenticity has been investigated in relation to both potentially positive and negative outcomes, but largely from the employee perspective. The current paper aims to investigate frontline authenticity in a sales/service context from the customer perspective, specifically examining the influence of adaptive selling in relation to a customer’s perception of salesperson authenticity. Effects on customer’s perceptions of final benefits and value are examined.

Survey data collected from customers of an insurance firm in South Korea were used to investigate the proposed model. Customer perceptions of salesperson adaptive selling, authenticity, key benefits delivered and organizational value provision were all captured.

The results suggest that authenticity does indeed positively influence perceptions of beneficial outcomes related to a transaction with a salesperson. These benefits then fully mediate the linkage from adaptive selling to a customer’s perceived value, gained from the salesperson’s organization.

The collection of data from only the customer’s perspective is both a strength and a weakness. Although all of the key variables investigated are important to evaluate via the lens of the customer, such a data collection always introduces the potential problem of common method bias.

Managers should be aware of the importance of a salesperson behaving in an authentic manner. Although many frontline contexts have desired and scripted narratives for interacting with customers, deriving key benefits through the customers’ eyes may come more strongly by allowing the frontline employee to act naturally.

Authenticity has been investigated in managerial and brand contexts, but an understanding of its importance in a frontline context is in its early stages. Similarly, the importance of understanding conditions that moderate the effectiveness of adaptive selling is consistent with calls in the literature.