The Influence of Customer Empowering Behaviors on Employees’ Job Crafting: A Moderated Mediation Model

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240125

Abstract

Abstract: Increasingly fierce market competition requires organizations to continuously improve service quality to meet the diverse and fast-changing service requirements of customers. As a group directly contacting with customers, frontline service employees have unique advantages in sensing changes in customer needs and adjusting service behaviors in a timely manner to meet customer expectations. Therefore, as a positive behavior of employees to redefine their work cognition and remodel their work content, frontline employees’ job crafting has attracted increasing research attention. Existing studies on the antecedents of employees’ job crafting have mainly focused on internal organization factors (e.g., employee characteristics and leadership) and largely ignored the influence of external organizational factors (e.g., customer empowering behaviors) on employees’ job crafting.
Based on the Self-determination Theory, this study investigates the effect of customer empowering behaviors on employees’ job crafting. In light of this, this study constructs and verifies the mediating effect of harmonious work passion between customer empowering behaviors and employees’ job crafting. Furthermore, this study also verifies the boundary effect of role breadth self-efficacy in this relationship. Results based on a time-lagged data of 373 frontline service employees revealed that customer empowering behaviors have a significant positive effect on employees’ job crafting, and role breadth self-efficacy plays a positive moderating role in this process. Moreover, harmonious work passion partly mediates the relationship between customer empowering behaviors and job crafting. Role breadth self-efficacy significantly strengthens the positive effect of customer empowering behaviors on harmonious work passion as well as the indirect effect of customer empowering behaviors on employees’ job crafting via harmonious work passion.
This research contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it deepens the understanding of employees’ job crafting. By focusing on the effects of customer empowering behaviors, this study shifts the research focus on the antecedents of job crafting from internal to external organizational factors. Second, this study also broadens our understanding of the outcomes of customer empowering behaviors. It unpacks the underlying mechanism of translating customer empowering behaviors into employees’ job crafting by considering a mediator (harmonious work passion) based on self-determination theory. Third, this study contributes by investigating the role breadth self-efficacy as a new and critical boundary condition that aggravates the positive effect of customer empowering behaviors.
This research provides several important practical implications. First, service organizations should pay attention to the important role that frontline service employees have in service delivery. To be specific, organizations should encourage employees to consciously collect the external heterogeneous resources and information provided by the customer, and encourage employees to make flexible decisions in service delivery, which are important in promoting employees’ job crafting behaviors. Second, given that harmonious work passion is positively related to employees’ job crafting, enterprises should pay attention to the influence of employees' work conditions on their job crafting, especially the effect of harmonious work passion. In this regard, organizations should create a supportive environment that can stimulate employees’ harmonious work passion to help them stay in a positive mental state and remodel their behavior to meet customer needs. Third, to amplify the positive effects of customer empowering behaviors, organizations should take measures to foster employees’ role breadth self-efficacy and pay special attention to employees who have low levels of role breadth self-efficacy.

Key words: customer empowering behaviors, harmonious work passion, role breadth self-efficacy, job crafting

摘要： 基于自我决定理论,通过373位员工多时点追踪样本探讨顾客授权行为对员工工作重塑的影响及其机制和作用边界,结果表明：顾客授权行为正向影响员工工作重塑,角色宽度自我效能感在这一过程中起正向调节作用;和谐式工作激情在顾客授权行为和工作重塑之间起部分中介作用;角色宽度自我效能感不仅强化了顾客授权行为与和谐式工作激情的正向关系,还进一步强化顾客授权行为通过和谐式工作激情影响员工工作重塑的间接效应。

关键词: 顾客授权行为, 和谐式工作激情, 角色宽度自我效能感, 工作重塑

Deng Xincai, Han Yue, Ye Yijiao, Guo Gongxing. The Influence of Customer Empowering Behaviors on Employees’ Job Crafting: A Moderated Mediation Model[J]. Journal of Psychological Science, 2024, 47(1): 211-219.

邓昕才, 韩月, 叶一娇, 郭功星. 顾客授权行为对员工工作重塑的影响：有调节的中介模型^*[J]. 心理科学, 2024, 47(1): 211-219.

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