The Relationship Between Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction And Service Quality Of Service Employees

The world has entered service economy ages. The main objectives of China's service industry development in"the eleventh five-year plan"are: by the end of 2020, to realize basically the transformation of economic structure to service economy; the added value of service accounts for 50% of the GDP; to further improve the market competition of the serve industry. Service quality is the major means for enterprises to achieve competitive advantage. However,"there is also some evidence that the overall service quality perception of customers has declined, and customer satisfaction has decreased"(Zeithaml and Bitner, 2004:9). The attitudinal and behavioral performance of service workers is crucial to service quality strategy.Organizational commitment and job satisfaction are employee's important work attitude. The service quality of frontline service employees is customers'overall evaluation of the attitudes and behaviors during the service encounters.There are many anecdotal cases in management literature about the relationship between employee attitude and customer reaction that employee's positive attitude lead to customer satisfaction and loyalty. However, relatively little empirical research has examined these possible linkages, particularly the linkage between organizational commitment and service quality (Allen and Grisaffe, 2001).Bagozzi(1992), the Dwight F, Benton professor of behavioral science in management and marketing in the School of Business Administration at the University of Michigan of USA, putted forward the self-regulation of attitudes, conations result in particular emotional and coping responses. Some scholars abroad have used this model to conduct research on employee behavior. Schmit and Allscheid(1995) proposed a theoretical model of the employee attitude-customer satisfaction process based on Bagozzi's(1992) model. But there is no consensus of the variables selection of appraisal processes, emotional reactions, coping responses.Employees'job and situation reaction is influenced by personal traits (Mount, Ilies, & Johnson, 2006). However, few scholars have introduced personal traits variables into the studies of the self-regulation of attitudes models. Moreover, empirical study under Chinese culture is scarce.Drawing from the literature review and theoretical analysis, based on self-regulation of attitude theory, person-situation fit theory, service climate theory, emotional contagion theory, and relevant empirical studies, the present study takes management commitment to service quality (MCSQ) as service employee's environment appraisal, job satisfaction and organizational commitment as emotional reactions, emotional reactions lead to coping responses, and customer service behavior is the result of service intention. Service effort is the instrumental variable of service intention, and customer perception of service quality is he instrumental variable of service behavior. Customer orientation is introduced in Bagozzi's (1992) model, and the path from emotional reactions to service quality and the path from MCSQ to service quality are added to the model to establish the conceptual framework of the relationship between organizational commitment and service quality of service employee. Then, descriptive statistic analysis, explanatory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and hierarchical multiple regression are used to test the model and hypotheses based on the data from a survey of Chinese frontline service employees. The main findings of the study are as follows:(1) MCSQ and customer orientation together influence service employee's organizational commitment and job satisfaction, which in turn influence service effort and service quality.(2) MCSQ exerts a positive influence directly on service employee's organizational commitment and job satisfaction.(3) Customer orientation exerts a positive influence directly on service employee's organizational commitment and job satisfaction.(4) Service employee's organizational commitment and job satisfaction exert a positive influence directly on service effort.(5) The directly positive influence of service employee's organizational commitment on service effort is higher than service employee's job satisfaction.(6) Service employee's service effort exerts a positive influence directly on service quality.(7) MCSQ exerts a positive influence directly on service quality, whereas the path is statistically nonsignificant. MCSQ influences indirectly on service quality through organizational commitment, job satisfaction and service effort.(8) Service employee's organizational commitment and job satisfaction exert a positive influence directly on service quality, whereas the path from organizational commitment to service quality is not statistically significant. The directly positive influence of service employee's job satisfaction on service quality is higher than service employee's organizational commitment.The finding holds important managerial implications for enterprise managers by understanding the relationship between organizational commitment, job satisfaction and service quality, and identifying the antecedents of organizational commitment and job satisfaction. In order to improve customer perceptions of service quality, organizations should show their support for employee quality service by simultaneous implementation of training, empowerment, and rewards, attach great importance to customer orientation management, effectively manage organizational commitment and job satisfaction of service employees, and integrate operation, marketing, and human resource functions. The major contributions of the current paper lie in the following aspects: (1) To empirically demonstrate that the mechanism of the influence of organizational commitment and job satisfaction on service quality of frontline service employees is different. The extant literatures have mainly examined the causal relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction, or their influence on service quality independently. However, few researches have identified and compared the mechanism of the influence of organizational commitment and job satisfaction on service quality. Based on emotional contagion theory, organizational commitment and job satisfaction which are simultaneously taken as emotional responses of service employee are introduced into the sequence of appraisal processes, emotional reactions and coping responses, and the direct influence of organizational commitment and job satisfaction on service quality is added and tested. The empirical study finding indicates that the mechanism of the influence of organizational commitment and job satisfaction on service quality is different. Service employee's organizational commitment and job satisfaction exert a positive influence directly on service quality. The directly positive influence of service employee's organizational commitment on service effort is higher than service employee's job satisfaction, and the directly positive influence of service employee's job satisfaction on service quality is higher than service employee's organizational commitment. Service employee's organizational commitment is more reasoned than service employee's job satisfaction, and service employee's job satisfaction is more perceptual than organizational commitment. Job satisfaction is more easily noticeable, its emotional contagion ability is stronger, and the mechanism of its influence on service quality is mainly based on emotional contagion process. Organizational commitment is more recessive and not easily noticeable, but it is the inner drive of employee, and is has a relatively stronger motivation, and the mechanism of its influence on service quality is mainly based on the self-regulation of attitude theory. Service employee's affective commitment to the organization leads to positive coping response, and they make more service effort, and exhibit excellent customer service behavior, which are perceived by customers. Therefore, managers must manage the two kinds of work attitudes in different ways. This finding provides new perspective for the theoretical study of organizational commitment and job satisfaction.(2) To empirically demonstrate that the mechanism of the influence of MCSQ on service quality of frontline service employees. To my knowledge, up to now scholars have not reached agreement on the definition of MCSQ, and few studies are from employee perspective (Babakus et al. 2003). Previous studies have only calculated the correlation coefficient between MCSQ and service quality (e.g., Reeves and Hoy 1993), or have explored the influence of MCSQ on service quality in recovery from service failures. However, few studies examine the mechanism of the influence of MCSQ on service quality of frontline service employees in general service context. Based on self-regulation of attitude theory, the study finds that MCSQ affects service quality of frontline service employees through the mediating variables of organizational commitment, job satisfaction and service effort indirectly, and the direct influence of MCSQ on service quality is statistically insignificant by empirical study of frontline service employees from beauty and haircut, mobile telecommunications, retail banking, retailing, and common restaurants sectors in China. This finding not only provides empirical evidence under Chinese culture for self-regulation of attitude theory, but also provides theoretical base for the implementation of internal marketing in order to enhance organizational commitment and job satisfaction of employees, and then to improve service quality.(3) To empirically demonstrate that when customer-oriented employees percept organization's commitment to nurture, develop, support, and reward its employees to achieve service excellence, they can have positive job response(i.e., organizational commitment and job satisfaction). The relationship between customer orientation, organizational commitment and job satisfaction is both controversial and contradictory in academic literature; Moreover, few literatures study the conditions on the influence of customer orientation on job response(Donavan, Brown, & Mowen, 2004). In the only research about customer behavioral intention formation, Gotlieb, Grewal, & Brown (1994) have studied perceived situational control in Bagozzi's (1992) model. However, extant research has not examined individual characteristics variables in the study of service employee's behavior. The present study takes customer orientation as individual characteristics variable, MCSQ as environment appraisal variable, and introduces them into Bagozzi's (1992) model. Customer orientation is a kind of service worker's surface personality trait, and it has great influence on the customer service behavior. MCSQ is employees'appraisal of an organization's commitment to nurture, develop, support, and reward its employees to achieve service excellence. Customer-oriented service workers fit better with those organizations that focus on service quality. According to person-situation fit theory, the congruence between person and organization has great influence on attitude and behavior of employees. The result of structural equation modeling indicates that the goodness of fit index of the conceptual theory model is better after the introducing of customer orientation. Furthermore, hierarchical multiple regression finds that customer orientation has a positive influence on frontline service employee's organizational commitment and job satisfaction. This finding not only provides further empirical evidence for that customer orientation exerts a positive influence directly on frontline service employee's organizational commitment and job satisfaction, but also provides new theoretical framework for study on relationship between customer orientation and job response.