Can employee workplace mindfulness counteract the indirect effects of customer incivility on proactive service performance through work engagement? A moderated mediation model

ABSTRACT

Customer incivility is widespread in service industries, inevitable as employees offer service to a broad range of customers from diverse backgrounds. Stress caused by rude customers depletes front-line employees’ personal resources and develops to adverse work-related outcomes. Workplace mindfulness may provide resources to reduce the detrimental effect of customer incivility on work engagement. Furthermore, drawing from the conservation of resource theory(COR) and job demands-resouces (JD-R) model, this study investigates how work engagement mediates between customer incivility and employee proactive service performance among casino employees. The findings support that workplace mindfulness buffers the relationship between customer incivility and work engagement. Customer incivility is negatively associated with proactive service performance through work engagement. Theoretical and research implications and practical suggestions are proposed.

客户不文明在服务行业中普遍存在，不可避免的是员工为来自不同背景的广大客户提供服务. 粗鲁的顾客造成的压力会耗尽一线员工的个人资源，并发展成与工作相关的负面结果. 工作场所的正念可以提供资源来减少顾客不礼貌对工作投入的不利影响. 此外，本研究以资源保护理论（COR）与工作需求资源模型（JD-R）为基础，探讨工作投入如何在赌场员工中介导顾客不礼貌与员工主动服务绩效. 研究结果支持，工作场所的正念可以缓冲顾客不礼貌和工作投入之间的关系. 通过工作投入，客户不礼貌与主动服务绩效呈负相关. 提出了研究的理论意义和实践建议.

KEYWORDS:

• Customer incivility
• work engagement
• workplace mindfulness
• proactive service performance
• casino employees

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the the 2020 Sehan University Research Fund.