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Drawing on the conservation of resource theory and emotional contagion perspective, this study aims to propose that customer mistreatment has an indirect effect on subsequent customer mistreatment by triggering high levels of surface acting. In other words, there is a vicious circle formed as a result of customer mistreatment and surface acting. This paper further argues that emotional regulation and conscientiousness are effective in breaking this vicious circle.

An experience sampling study was conducted on 97 frontline service employees in a hotel chain’s restaurants in China, with two daily surveys for ten consecutive days. Multilevel path analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

The results indicate that employees experiencing customer mistreatment in the morning would adopt the surface acting strategy more frequently in the afternoon, which in turn induces more customer mistreatment in the afternoon. Further, this indirect effect can be mitigated by high (versus low) levels of emotional regulation and conscientiousness.

Recently, there has been growing recognition of the vital links between customer mistreatment and negative employee outcomes. However, these studies have failed to consider the carryover effect of customer mistreatment. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first pioneer study on whether and how customer mistreatment can affect subsequent instances of customer mistreatment, thereby offering a more comprehensive understanding of the consequences of customer mistreatment.

Based on the person-environment (P-E) fit theory, this study aims to explore the effect of customer mistreatment on the reduced service performance of hospitality employees mediated by person-job (P-J) fit perceptions and moderated by job crafting.

The authors tested this study’s hypotheses with a nine-day diary study involving 83 service employees located in Lanzhou, China; a total of 548 daily surveys were completed. The authors used multilevel structural equation modeling to analyze the data.

Employees who experienced daily customer mistreatment suffered diminished P-J fit perceptions, leading to lower levels of service performance the next day. In addition, job crafting significantly buffered the impact of customer mistreatment on P-J fit perceptions and the indirect impact of customer mistreatment on service performance through P-J fit perceptions.

Given the damaging effect that customer mistreatment has on service performance, where employees’ P-J fit perceptions are impaired, hotel managers should implement service competence improvement training programs and managerial preventions to reduce the possibility of customer mistreatment behavior. The moderating role of job crafting behavior suggests that managers should offer supportive practices (i.e. job autonomy) to encourage job crafting behaviors among employees.

This study reveals that individuals’ P-J fit perceptions can explain the damaging impacts of customer mistreatment on service performance, a finding that contributes valuable information to the literature on customer mistreatment and P-E fit. Second, this study also tests the impact of individuals’ job crafting behaviors in terms of mitigating the negative effect of customer mistreatment. Finally, this study’s findings broaden the scope of predictors of P-J fit perceptions by revealing that customer mistreatment can pose a threat to hospitality employees’ P-J fit perceptions.

Drawing on the self-cognitive theory, this study aims to propose a conceptual model that links customer mistreatment with different types of helping behaviors through the self-efficacy mechanism.

The empirical analysis made use of the original data of three hotels located in southern China. The authors tested the hypotheses with a three-wave survey of a sample of 430 frontline workers in 95 groups.

Customer mistreatment may reduce employees’ self-efficacy, which has both positive and negative effects depending on the type of helping. Moreover, the coworkers’ supporting climate buffered the influence of self-efficacy on autonomous and dependent helping.

The authors resolve the ambiguity surrounding customer mistreatment-helping and self-efficacy-helping relations. Thus, the authors extend the knowledge on the influence of customer mistreatment and self-efficacy on helping behaviors by establishing that both positive and negative effects may exist depending on the type of helping. Moreover, this study identifies the predictive role of self-efficacy in autonomous and dependent helping.

This study aims to examine the relations between service employee blame attributions in response to customer incivility and revenge desires and revenge behavior toward customers, and whether employee empathy moderated these relations.

The authors used survey data based on the critical incident method provided by a sample of 431 customer service employees.

The results suggested that blaming a customer was positively associated with desire for revenge and revenge behaviors against the uncivil customer. In addition, the authors found that blame was less strongly associated with desire for revenge when employees empathized with customers. Finally, the results show that an employee who desired revenge against the uncivil customer and who empathized with the customer was more – not less – likely to engage in revenge.

The authors found that when employees experience mistreatment from customers, it increases the likelihood that they will blame the offending customer and behave in ways that are contrary to their organization’s interests. The results suggest several points of intervention for organizations to more effectively respond to customer mistreatment.

In this study, the authors make one of the first attempts to investigate the relationships between service employee attributions of blame when they experience customer incivility, desire for revenge and customer-directed revenge behaviors. The authors also examined whether empathy moderates the relations between blame attribution, desires for revenge and revenge behavior.

The purpose of the present research is to investigate the mechanisms by which conflict with customers (i.e. customer mistreatment) contributes to employees’ work withdrawal.

This paper tests its hypotheses by means of a field study of a sample of front-line health care workers in China. Data were collected in three waves over four months; a total of 398 health care workers completed the questionnaires and represented the final sample. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results indicate that mistreatment by customers contributes to employees’ work withdrawal, and emotional exhaustion serves as a mediator in this linkage. In addition, social support moderates the positive relation between customer mistreatment and employees’ emotional exhaustion, whereas conscientiousness moderates the positive relation between emotional exhaustion and withdrawal behavior.

The sample used may not fully justify the generalizability of the research results. Without distinguishing different sources of social support may be another limitation. In addition, this study could be improved by using a multi-source survey design.

To help employees effectively cope with interpersonal conflict with customers, organizations should take action to promote communication between employees and their supervisors and coworkers. It is also advisable for organizations to adjust their selection strategies and hire front-line employees high in conscientiousness.

This research presents a resource-based framework to illuminate the detrimental effects of prolonged exposure to customer mistreatment on health care workers’ withdrawal behavior in Chinese context. Furthermore, this study examines factors that may serve to mitigate the harmful effects of customer mistreatment and regards workplace social support and conscientiousness as two different kinds of resources that can play dissimilar roles when employees are coping with customer mistreatment.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between knowledge-hiding behaviors (evasive hiding, playing dumb and rationalized hiding) and employees’ silence (defensive silence, relational silence and ineffectual silence). Besides, this paper investigates the relation mediated by psychological contract breach.

The data were collected with three-time lags (40 days each) through a structured questionnaire from 389 employees of registered software houses in Pakistan. The structural equation modeling (partial least squares) approach is used for data analysis.

The findings of this study confirm that knowledge-hiding behaviors have a significant and positive relationship with employees’ silence, and psychological contract breach significantly mediates the relationship between knowledge-hiding behaviors and employees’ silence.

The implications of this study are very supportive to the knowledge-intensive organizations, i.e. software houses. The management should increase the knowledge sharing and trust culture among employees to discourage the knowledge-hiding behaviors among employees. Moreover, supervisors should develop trust among employees, motivate them to avoid knowledge hiding and encourage the employees to raise their voices against their problems in a formal way.

The present study highlights the impact of different dimensions of knowledge hiding on employees’ silence and the role of psychological contract breach as a mediator in this scenario.

The purpose of this study is to examine the mediating effect of psychological well-being between organizational dehumanization and two outcome variables: service recovery performance and service sabotage. This research also investigates whether organizational tenure moderates the relationship between organizational dehumanization and psychological well-being.

Using survey methodology, 200 hotel frontline service employees (FLEs) in Turkey were sampled over two time points. Additionally, employees’ direct supervisors rated their service recovery performance. The partial least squares method, specifically SmartPLS 3.3.3, was used for data analysis.

The results indicate that organizational dehumanization negatively influences employees’ psychological well-being. However, organizational tenure moderates this relationship, in which organizational dehumanization has less of a negative effect on employees’ psychological well-being in those with longer tenure. Psychological well-being was found to mediate the relationship between organizational dehumanization and service recovery performance. Finally, psychological well-being mediates the relationship between organizational dehumanization and service sabotage.

Managers should consider the negative effect organizational dehumanization has on FLEs’ psychological well-being and aim to establish an organizational culture that values these employees as individuals and as invaluable resources for the organization. Further, this study has found that less tenured employees are less likely to have the psychological resources to cope with organizational dehumanization and are more susceptible to decreased productivity (i.e. service recovery performance) and engaging in counterproductive work behaviors (i.e. service sabotage) due to mistreatment in the workplace.

This study furthers our understanding of organizational dehumanization, an understudied concept in hospitality research, which influences employee outcomes. The findings of this study contribute to the advancement of the self-determination theory and how organizational dehumanization impacts psychological well-being. It also contributes to the conservation of resources theory and current literature on service recovery performance and service sabotage.

Drawing on self-determination theory (SDT), this study aims to understand the adverse effects of customer mistreatment on employee performance and well-being by thwarting the satisfaction of employees' basic psychological needs. It also examines how these negative effects may be mitigated by empowerment human resource management (HRM) practices.

Two studies were conducted using survey data collected in China. In Study 1, cross-sectional data from 321 telemarketing employees were analyzed to examine how customer mistreatment reduces the satisfaction of employees' basic psychological needs, harming job performance and job satisfaction. In Study 2, multiwave, multisource data were collected from 149 property agents and their supervisors to replicate the findings of Study 1 and further test empowerment HRM as a moderator of the relationship between customer mistreatment and satisfaction of needs.

The results from both studies show that customer mistreatment leads to low job performance and job satisfaction via reduced satisfaction of employees' needs for autonomy and competence but not relatedness. Moreover, the negative effect on the satisfaction of employees' needs for autonomy and competence was buffered when organizations had high empowerment HRM practices in place.

This study provides new insights on customer mistreatment by understanding its effects from a motivational perspective, which has not been considered in prior research. It also explores how HRM practices can help satisfy employee needs in adverse work environments induced by customer mistreatment.

The purpose of this paper is to study the moderating role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the knowledge asset–firm financial performance relationship.

This paper first develops hypotheses based on multiple theoretical lenses and uses a sample of 3,030 US firms in 51 industries over 11 years to test these hypotheses.

It is found that CSR positively moderates the relationship between research and development (R&D) investments and the firm's financial performance, and the moderating effect declines when firms mistreat their employees.

This paper provides evidence that when firms allocate their resources, they should consider the synthetic effect among different activities such as R&D and CSR.

First, this study offers a new and alternate mechanism for the appropriability literature and also extends the boundary of CSR research. Second, this work shifts the CSR performance thought by considering CSR as an enabler rather than a driver for performance.

This paper investigates the extent to which disability type contributes to differential evaluation of employees by managers. In particular, the authors examined managerial prejudice against 3 disability diagnoses (i.e. psychiatric, physical disability and pending diagnosis) compared to a control group in a return-to-work scenario.

Working managers (N = 238) were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 scenarios containing medical documentation for a fictional employee that disclosed either the employee's psychiatric disability, physical disability, or a pending diagnosis. The authors also collected a separate sample (N = 42) as a control group that received a version of the medical documentation but contained no information about the disability diagnosis.

Compared with employees without stated disabilities, employees with a psychiatric disability were evaluated as more aggressive toward other employees, less trustworthy and less committed to the organization. Compared to employees with either physical disabilities or pending diagnoses, employees with psychiatric disabilities were rated as less committed to the organization. The authors discuss implications for future research and the trade-offs inherent in disability labeling and disclosure.

The current study extends prior research by examining a broader range of outcomes (i.e. perceived aggressiveness, trustworthiness and commitment) and moving beyond performance evaluations of employees with disabilities. The authors also assess the relative status of a “pending diagnosis” category—a type of disclosure often encountered by managers in many jurisdictions as part of accommodating employees returning to work from medical-related absence.