Abstract
The authors investigate three types of customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors (COBSBs) a frontline service employee may perform that are associated with linking a service organization to its potential or actual customers: external representation, internal influence, and service delivery. The authors propose and test a withdrawal model to explain the negative effects of role conflict and role ambiguity on COBSBs across a sample of 220 lower-level, nonprofessional service providers of a major retail bank and a sample of 90 higher-level, professional service providers from the business credit division of an international financial services corporation. The results demonstrate that (1) indirect paths through job satisfaction and organizational commitment entirely account for the negative effects of the role stressors on COBSBs, (2) the indirect negative effects of the role stressors are stronger on external representation and internal influence behaviors, and (3) role conflict also has a significant positive direct relationship with internal influence behaviors.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, J. Stacy. 1976. “The Structure and Dynamics of Behavior in Organizational Boundary Roles.” InHandbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Ed. Marvin D. Dunnette. New York: John Wiley, 1175–1199.
Aldrich, Howard and Diane Herker. 1977. “Boundary Spanning Roles and Organizational Structure.”Academy of Management Review 2 (April): 217–230.
Arbuckle, James L. and Werner Wothke. 1999Amos 4.0 User's Guide. Chicago: SmallWaters.
Babin, Barry J. and James S. Boles. 1996. “The Effects of Perceived Co-Worker Involvement and Supervisor Support on Service Provider Role Stress, Performance and Job Satisfaction.”Journal of Retailing 72 (Spring): 57–75.
Bettencourt, Lance A., Kevin P. Gwinner, and Matthew L. Meuter. 2001. “A Comparison of Attitude, Personality, and Knowledge Predictors of Service-Oriented Organizational Citizenship Behaviors.”Journal of Applied Psychology 86 (1): 29–41.
Blau, Peter M. 1964.Exchange and Power in Social Life. New York: John Wiley.
Bollen, Kenneth A. 1989Structural Equations With Latent Variables. New York: John Wiley.
Booms, Bernard H. and Mary Jo Bitner. 1981. “Marketing Strategies and Organization Structures for Service Firms.” InMarketing of Services. Eds. James H. Donnelly and William R. George. Chicago: American Marketing Association, 47–51.
Bowen, David E. and Benjamin Schneider. 1985. “Boundary-Spanning-Role Employees and the Service Encounter: Some Guidelines for Future Management and Research.” InThe Service Encounter. Eds. John Czepiel, Michael R. Solomon, and Carol F. Surprenant. New York: Lexington Books, 127–147.
Brief, Arthur P. and Stephan J. Motowidlo. 1986. “Prosocial Organizational Behaviors.”Academy of Management Review 11 (October): 710–725.
Brown, Steven P. and Robert A. Peterson. 1993. “Antecedents and Consequences of Salesperson Job Satisfaction: Meta-Analysis and Assessment of Causal Effects.”Journal of Marketing Research 30 (February): 63–77.
Chen, Xiao-Ping, Chun Hui, and Douglas J. Sego. 1998. “The Role of Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Turnover: Conceptualization and Tests of Key Hypotheses.”Journal of Applied Psychology 83 (December): 922–931.
Cote, Joseph A. and M. Ronald Buckley. 1987. “Estimating Trait, Method, and Error Variance: Generalizing Across 70 Construct Validation Studies.”Journal of Marketing Research 24 (August): 315–318.
Day, George S. 1994. “The Capabilities of Market-Driven Organizations.”Journal of Marketing 58 (October): 37–52.
Diamantopoulos, Adamantios and Heidi M. Winklhofer. 2001. “Index Construction With Formative Indicators: An Alternative to Scale Development.”Journal of Marketing Research 38 (May): 269–277.
Dubinsky, Alan J. and Steven W. Hartley. 1986a. “Antecedents of Retail Salesperson Performance: A Path-Analytic Perspective.”Journal of Business Research 14 (June): 253–268.
— and —. 1986b. “A Path-Analytic Study of a Model of Salesperson Performance.”Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 14 (Spring): 36–46.
Fornell, Claes and David F. Larcker. 1981. “Evaluating Structural Equation Models With Unobservable Variables and Measurement Error.”Journal of Marketing Research 18 (February): 39–50.
Gillet, B. J. and Donald P. Schwab. 1975. “Convergent and Discriminant Validities of the Corresponding Job Description Index and Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire Scales.”Journal of Applied Psychology 60 (3): 313–317.
Goolsby, Jerry R. 1992. “A Theory of Role Stress in Boundary Spanning Positions of Marketing Organizations.”Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 20 (Spring): 155–164.
Griffeth, Rodger W., Stefan Gaertner, and Jeffrey K. Sager. 1999. “Taxonomic Model of Withdrawal Behaviors: The Adaptive Response Model.”Human Resource Management Review 9 (4): 577–590.
Hampton, Ron, Alan J. Dubinsky, and Steven J. Skinner. 1986. “A Model of Sales Supervisor Leadership Behavior and Retail Salespeople's Job-Related Outcomes.”Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 14 (Fall): 33–43.
Hartline, Michael D., James G. Maxham III, and Daryl O. McKee. 2000. “Corridors of Influence in the Dissemination of Customer-Oriented Strategy to Customer Contact Service Employees.”Journal of Marketing 64 (April): 35–50.
Hirschman, Albert O. 1970Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Jackson, Susan E. and Randall S. Schuler. 1985. “A Meta-Analysis and Conceptual Critique of Research on Role Ambiguity and Role Conflict in Work Settings.”Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 36 (August): 16–78.
Jex, Steve M. 1998.Stress and Job Performance: Theory, Research, and Implications for Managerial Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Jones, Eli, Donna Massey Kantak, Charles M. Futrell, and Mark W. Johnston. 1996. “Leader Behavior, Work Attitudes, and Turnover of Salespeople: An Integrative Study.”Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management 16 (Spring): 13–23.
Kahn, Robert L., Donald M. Wolfe, Robert P. Quinn, and J. Diedrick Snoek. 1964.Organizational Stress: Studies in Role Conflict and Ambiguity. New York: John Wiley.
Kelloway, E. Kevin and Julian Barling. 1990. “Item Content Versus Item Wording: Disentangling Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity.”Journal of Applied Psychology 75 (December): 738–742.
MacKenzie, Scott B., Philip M. Podsakoff, and Michael Ahearne 1998. “Some Possible Antecedents and Consequences of In-Role and Extra-Role Salesperson Performance.”Journal of Marketing 62 (July): 87–98.
Mathieu, John E. and Dennis M. Zajac. 1990. “A Review and Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents, Correlates, and Consequences of Organizational Commitment.”Psychological Bulletin 108 (2): 171–194.
Mowday, Richard T., Richard M. Steers, and Lyman W. Porter. 1979. “The Measurement of Organizational Commitment.”Journal of Vocational Behavior 14 (April): 224–247.
Netemeyer, Richard G., James S. Boles, Daryl O. McKee, and Robert McMurrian. 1997. “An Investigation Into the Antecedents of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors in a Personal Selling Context.”Journal of Marketing 61 (July): 85–98.
—, Scott Burton, and Mark W. Johnston. 1995. “A Nested Comparison of Four Models of the Consequences of Role Perception Variables.”Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 61 (January): 77–93.
Organ, Dennis W. 1988a.Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Good Soldier Syndrome. Lexington: Lexington Books.
— 1988b. “A Restatement of the Satisfaction-Performance Hypothesis.”Journal of Management 14 (December): 547–557.
— and Katherine Ryan. 1995. “A Meta-Analytic Review of Attitudinal and Dispositional Predictors of Organizational Citizenship Behavior.”Personnel Psychology 48 (Winter): 775–802.
Parasuraman, A., Valarie A. Zeithaml, and Leonard L. Berry. 1988. “SERVQUAL: A Multiple-Item Scale for Measuring Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality.”Journal of Retailing 64 (Spring): 12–40.
Rizzo, John R., Robert J. House, and Sidney I. Lirtzman. 1970. “Role Conflict and Ambiguity in Complex Organizations.”Administrative Science Quarterly 15 (March): 150–163.
Rucci, Anthony J., Steven P. Kirn, and Richard T. Quinn. 1998. “The Employee-Customer-Profit Chain at Sears.”Harvard Business Review 76 (January–February): 82–97.
SAS Institute. 1989.SAS/STAT User's Guide Version 6, 4th ed., Vol. 1. Cary, NC: SAS Institute.
Schneider, Benjamin and David E. Bowen. 1984. “New Service Design, Development and Implementation and the Employee.” InDeveloping New Services. Eds. William R. George and Claudia E. Marshall. Chicago: American Marketing Association, 82–101.
Singh, Jagdip. 1998. “Striking a Balance in Boundary Spanning Positions: An Investigation of Some Unconventional Influences of Role Stressors and Job Characteristics on Job Outcomes of Salespeople.”Journal of Marketing 62 (July): 69–86.
—. 2000. “Performance Productivity and Quality of Frontline Employees in Service Organizations.”Journal of Marketing 64 (April): 15–34.
—, Jerry R. Goolsby, and Gary K. Rhoads. 1994. “Behavioral and Psychological Consequences of Boundary Spanning Burnout for Customer Service Representatives.”Journal of Marketing Research 31 (November): 558–569.
Steenkamp, Jan-Benedict E. M. and Hans Baumgartner. 1998. “Assessing Measurement Invariance in Cross-National Consumer Research.”Journal of Consumer Research 25 (June): 78–90.
Steers, Richard M. 1977. “Antecedents and Outcomes of Organizational Commitment.”Administrative Science Quarterly 22 (March): 46–56.
Tepper, Bennett J., Daniel Lockhart, and Jenny Hoobler. 2001. “Justice, Citizenship, and Role Definition Effects.”Journal of Applied Psychology 86 (August): 789–796.
Van Bruggen, Gerrit H., Gary L. Lilien, and Manish Kacker. 2002. “Informants in Organizational Marketing Research: Why Use Multiple Informants and How to Aggregate Responses.”Journal of Marketing Research 39 (November): 469–478.
Van Dyne, Linn, Jill W. Graham, and Richard M. Dienesch. 1994. “Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Construct Redefinition, Measurement, and Validation.”Academy of Management Journal 37 (August): 765–802.
Weatherly, Kristopher A. and David A. Tansik. 1993. “Tactics Used by Customer-Contact Workers: Effects of Role Stress, Boundary Spanning and Control.”International Journal of Service Industry Management 4 (3): 4–17.
Weiss, David J., R. V. Davis, G. W. England, and L. H. Lofquist. 1967. “Manual for the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire.” InMinnesota Studies in Vocational Rehabilitation, Vol. 22. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, Industrial Relations Center Work Adjustment Project.
Williams, Larry J. and John T. Hazer. 1986. “Antecedents and Consequences of Satisfaction and Commitment in Turnover Models: A Reanalysis Using Latent Variable Structural Equation Methods.”Journal of Applied Psychology 71 (May): 219–231.
Zeithaml, Valarie A., Leonard L. Berry, and A. Parasuraman. 1988. “Communication and Control Processes in the Delivery of Service Quality.”Journal of Marketing 52 (April): 35–48.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Lance A. Bettencourt (lbettenc@indiana.edu) (Ph.D., Arizona State University) is an assistant professor of marketing in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. His research has appeared in a variety of journals, including theJournal of Applied Psychology, theJournal of Retailing, California Management Review, theJournal of Consumer Research, Marketing Letters, andPsychology & Marketing. His areas of research interest include service quality implementation, organizational citizenship behaviors, and customer contributions to service delivery effectiveness.
Stephen W. Brown (stephen.brown@asu.edu) (Ph.D., Arizona State University) holds the Edward M. Carson Chair in Services Marketing, is professor of marketing, and director of the Center for Services Leadership, W. P. Carey School of Business, at Arizona State University. His research has appeared in a variety of journals, including theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, theJournal of Retailing, theJournal of Applied Psychology, Sloan Management Review, andCalifornia Management Review. His areas of research interest include service delivery and recovery, strategic service relationship management, service quality and loyalty, and growing services revenue in product-based businesses. He is the former president of the American Marketing Association and coauthor or coeditor of 20 books on marketing and related topics.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bettencourt, L.A., Brown, S.W. Role stressors and customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors in service organizations. JAMS 31, 394–408 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070303255636
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070303255636