The Management of Customer-Contact Service Employees: An Empirical Investigation
研究构建并检验了服务员工管理模型，考察经理-员工、员工-角色、员工-顾客三个界面上的管理控制机制（授权、行为评估、管理层对服务质量的承诺）对员工态度和行为以及顾客感知服务质量的影响。
The authors develop and test a model of service employee management that examines constructs simultaneously across three interfaces of the service delivery process: manager-employee, employee-role, and employee-customer. The authors examine the attitudinal and behavioral responses of customer-contact employees that can influence customers’ perceptions of service quality, the relationships among these responses, and three formal managerial control mechanisms (empowerment, behavior-based employee evaluation, and management commitment to service quality). The findings indicate that managers who are committed to service quality are more likely to empower their employees and use behavior-based evaluation. However, the use of empowerment has both positive and negative consequences in the management of contact employees. Some of the negative consequences are mitigated by the positive effects of behavior-based employee evaluation. To increase customers’ perceptions of service quality, managers must increase employees’ self-efficacy and job satisfaction, and reduce employees’ role conflict and ambiguity. Implications for the management of customer-contact service employees and directions for further research are discussed.