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See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil: a study of defensive organizational behavior towards customer complaints

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Abstract

Despite substantial benefits of an effective complaint management for companies, there is ample evidence that many firms do not handle customer complaints appropriately. This paper aims at providing a theoretical explanation for this surprising phenomenon. Drawing on psychological and organizational theory, the authors introduce the concept of defensive organizational behavior towards customer complaints as well as provide a rich conceptualization and operationalization of this phenomenon. Moreover, in an empirical study, they systematically analyze how defensive organizational behavior towards customer complaints is driven by organizational antecedents and, based on a dyadic data set, how it affects customer post-complaint reactions.

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  1. Department of Marketing, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    Christian Homburg & Andreas Fürst

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  1. Christian Homburg
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  2. Andreas Fürst
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Correspondence to Christian Homburg.

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Homburg, C., Fürst, A. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil: a study of defensive organizational behavior towards customer complaints. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 35, 523–536 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-006-0009-x

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