The impact of employee satisfaction on quality and profitability in high‐contact service industries
基于香港206家服务门店数据，研究发现员工满意度显著提升服务质量和客户满意度，进而提高企业盈利能力，并存在“满意度-质量-利润”循环效应。
Abstract The extant operations management literature has extensively investigated the associations among quality, customer satisfaction, and firm profitability. However, the influence of employee attributes on these performance dimensions has rarely been examined. In this study we investigate the impact of employee satisfaction on operational performance in high‐contact service industries. Based on an empirical study of 206 service shops in Hong Kong, we examined the hypothesized relationships among employee satisfaction, service quality, customer satisfaction, and firm profitability. Using structural equations modeling, we found that employee satisfaction is significantly related to service quality and to customer satisfaction, while the latter in turn influences firm profitability. We also found that firm profitability has a moderate non‐recursive effect on employee satisfaction, leading to a “satisfaction–quality–profit cycle”. Our empirical investigation suggests that employee satisfaction is an important consideration for operations managers to boost service quality and customer satisfaction. We provide empirical evidence that employee satisfaction plays a significant role in enhancing the operational performance of organizations in the high‐contact service sector.