Old signals, new era: Reconsidering how customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction impact shareholder wealth
研究社交媒体和零售投资者崛起的新环境下，客户满意度与员工满意度的不一致如何向投资者传递信号并影响股东财富，发现两者同时上升时员工满意度意外增加反而降低股东财富。
Abstract Extant research suggests that higher levels of customer and employee satisfaction signal a firm’s competitive advantage, resulting in greater firm value. This article advances the understanding of how firms can manage customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction to increase shareholder wealth in a new environment due to the emergence of social media and a new class of retail investors. Drawing from stakeholder theory and signaling theory, we argue that inconsistency in customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction can be informative to investors and lead to greater shareholder wealth in such a new environment. Our findings demonstrate that there is a negative joint effect of the two on shareholder wealth, such that unanticipated increases in employee satisfaction reduces shareholder wealth when customer satisfaction has also increased. Social media visibility and industry concentration are two key moderators that strengthen the negative joint effect. Our study provides important theoretical implications and valuable suggestions to managers to determine what their satisfaction indicators communicate in a new era where social media and the retail investor class have gained outsized importance.