Role stressors and customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors in service organizations

The authors investigate three types of customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors (COBSBs) a frontline service employee may perform that are associated with linking a service organization to its potential or actual customers: external representation, internal influence, and service delivery. The authors propose and test a withdrawal model to explain the negative effects of role conflict and role ambiguity on COBSBs across a sample of 220 lower-level, nonprofessional service providers of a major retail bank and a sample of 90 higher-level, professional service providers from the business credit division of an international financial services corporation. The results demonstrate that (1) indirect paths through job satisfaction and organizational commitment entirely account for the negative effects of the role stressors on COBSBs, (2) the indirect negative effects of the role stressors are stronger on external representation and internal influence behaviors, and (3) role conflict also has a significant positive direct relationship with internal influence behaviors. Lance A. Bettencourt (lbettenc@indiana.edu) (Ph.D., Arizona State University) is an assistant professor of marketing in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. His research has appeared in a variety of journals, including theJournal of Applied Psychology, theJournal of Retailing, California Management Review, theJournal of Consumer Research, Marketing Letters, andPsychology & Marketing. His areas of research interest include service quality implementation, organizational citizenship behaviors, and customer contributions to service delivery effectiveness. Stephen W. Brown (stephen.brown@asu.edu) (Ph.D., Arizona State University) holds the Edward M. Carson Chair in Services Marketing, is professor of marketing, and director of the Center for Services Leadership, W. P. Carey School of Business, at Arizona State University. His research has appeared in a variety of journals, including theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, theJournal of Retailing, theJournal of Applied Psychology, Sloan Management Review, andCalifornia Management Review. His areas of research interest include service delivery and recovery, strategic service relationship management, service quality and loyalty, and growing services revenue in product-based businesses. He is the former president of the American Marketing Association and coauthor or coeditor of 20 books on marketing and related topics.