Customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors: Test of a social exchange model of antecedents

Using a sample of 281 frontline service employees of a national retail bank, we test a social exchange model of antecedents of three dimensions of customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors suggested by prior boundary-spanning and services marketing/management literatures: external representation, internal influence, and service delivery. In support of our hypotheses, we identify fully mediated relationships from procedural, interactional, and distributive justice to external representation and internal influence via job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Our results generally support our expectation that the indirect effects of procedural justice on external representation and internal influence are stronger than the indirect effects of distributive or interactional justice on these behaviors. Also, our results reveal no significant indirect effects of procedural and distributive justice on service delivery behaviors. However, we find an unexpected direct positive path from interactional justice to service delivery behaviors. We interpret this latter finding in light of the normative value of interactional justice as a source of role modeling or managerial legitimacy.