Are You Being Served? The Relationship between School Climate for Service and Teachers' Engagement, Satisfaction, and Intention to Leave: A Moderated Mediation Model

ABSTRACT

The notion of service has been receiving increasing attention in organizational psychology literature in recent years, due to the client-oriented managerial movement. Yet, little to no attention has been paid to the service notion in educational psychology despite its high relevance to educational settings, given the pressure to be more service-oriented and possess a client-focused state of mind. The present study explores the notion of service in school domains by examining the joint effects of climate for service and the internal service in schools on teachers' work attitudes: work engagement, job satisfaction, and intention to leave their work. The notion of climate for service emphasizes the school's attitude of teachers as service providers to its clients (students and their parents); internal climate emphasizes the school's attitude of providing service to its teaching staff. The study was conducted via a sample of 423 teachers from 30 different schools in Israel. We hypothesized that the indirect relationship between the climate for service and teachers' job satisfaction and intention to leave work would be mediated by teacher work engagement. Our findings supported this hypothesis. Moreover, this indirect relationship via teacher work engagement was demonstrated most strongly when the internal service quality received was high, providing teachers with the capability to deliver what the service climate motivates them to do. Therefore, service-oriented resources—both climate for service and internal service—may be crucial in affecting teachers work attitudes and should be specifically targeted by principals and other educational decision makers.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate for service
• intention to leave
• internal service
• service quality in schools
• teacher work engagement

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Liat Eldor

Liat Eldor is a post-doctorate researcher at The Wharton School, Management Department, University of Pennsylvania. Her current research interests are employee engagement, employee-organization relationship, and employees' subjective well-being concepts such as job crafting, vigor, and compassionate and caring relationships in the workplace.

Anat Shoshani

Anat Shoshani is an Assistant Professor at the School of Psychology in the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya. Her research interests lie primarily within the fields of political violence and positive psychology, with a particular emphasis on studying the effects of political violence and terrorism on children, and promoting children's resilience and strengths in the face of adversity. She serves as academic director of Maytiv Center for research and practice in positive psychology. Maytiv Center was established in 2010 as part of the School of Psychology in the IDC, and aims to promote evidence-based community programs to advance resilience and well-being on the individual, organization, and community levels.