IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v170y2024ics0148296323007087.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Render good for evil? The relationship between customer mistreatment and customer-oriented citizenship behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Ni, Dan
  • Liu, Xin
  • Zheng, Xiaoming

Abstract

This research examines when and how employees might (or might not) engage in customer-oriented citizenship behavior after experiencing customer mistreatment. Drawing upon attribution theory and social exchange theory, we propose that customer mistreatment is more positively related to employee guilt when employees have a higher (rather than a lower) level of self-attribution, and is less negatively related to employee forgiveness toward customers when employees have a lower (rather than a higher) level of self-attribution. In turn, increased employee guilt is associated with more customer-oriented citizenship behavior, whereas decreased employee forgiveness toward customers is associated with less customer-oriented citizenship behavior. Empirical data collected from 151 service employees in China, using a survey design (Study 1), and from 393 Western workers, using an experimental design (Study 2), support our hypotheses. Our work contributes to the customer mistreatment literature and has implications for service practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Ni, Dan & Liu, Xin & Zheng, Xiaoming, 2024. "Render good for evil? The relationship between customer mistreatment and customer-oriented citizenship behavior," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:170:y:2024:i:c:s0148296323007087
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114349
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296323007087
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114349?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Long-Zeng Wu & Haina Zhang & Randy Chiu & Ho Kwan & Xiaogang He, 2014. "Hostile Attribution Bias and Negative Reciprocity Beliefs Exacerbate Incivility’s Effects on Interpersonal Deviance," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 120(2), pages 189-199, March.
    2. Thompson, Bryant & Simkins, Travis J, 2017. "Self-oriented forgiveness and other-oriented forgiveness: Shaping high-quality exchange relationships," Journal of Management & Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(5), pages 741-765, September.
    3. Vanessa K. Bohns & Francis J. Flynn, 2013. "Guilt by Design: Structuring Organizations to Elicit Guilt as an Affective Reaction to Failure," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(4), pages 1157-1173, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ying Wang & Shufeng Xiao & Run Ren, 2022. "A Moral Cleansing Process: How and When Does Unethical Pro-organizational Behavior Increase Prohibitive and Promotive Voice," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 176(1), pages 175-193, February.
    2. Yijing Lyu & Long-Zeng Wu & Yijiao Ye & Ho Kwong Kwan & Yuanyi Chen, 2023. "Rebellion Under Exploitation: How and When Exploitative Leadership Evokes Employees’ Workplace Deviance," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 185(3), pages 483-498, July.
    3. Paul Dunn & Jonathan Farrar & Cass Hausserman, 2018. "The Influence of Guilt Cognitions on Taxpayers’ Voluntary Disclosures," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 148(3), pages 689-701, March.
    4. Jeremy D. Mackey & Lei Huang & Wei He, 2020. "You Abuse and I Criticize: An Ego Depletion and Leader–Member Exchange Examination of Abusive Supervision and Destructive Voice," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 579-591, July.
    5. Gong, Xiushuang & Wang, Hanwen & Zhang, Xiadan & Tian, Hui, 2022. "Why does service inclusion matter? The effect of service exclusion on customer indirect misbehavior," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    6. Newark, Daniel A. & Bohns, Vanessa K. & Flynn, Francis J., 2017. "A helping hand is hard at work: Help-seekers’ underestimation of helpers’ effort," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 18-29.
    7. Hua, Changhua & Zhao, Li & He, Qile & Chen, Ziguang, 2023. "When and how workplace ostracism leads to interpersonal deviance: The moderating effects of self-control and negative affect," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    8. Nicolas Raineri & Corentin Hericher & Jorge Humberto Mejía-Morelos & Pascal Paillé, 2022. "A deontic perspective on organizational citizenship behavior toward the environment: The contribution of anticipated guilt," Post-Print hal-03796112, HAL.
    9. Guglielmo Faldetta, 2022. "Forgiving the Unforgivable: The Possibility of the ‘Unconditional’ Forgiveness in the Workplace," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 91-103, September.
    10. Qiang Wang & Mei-Hua Lin & Anupama Narayan & Gary N. Burns & Nathan A. Bowling, 2022. "A cross-cultural examination of the relationships between job attitudes and workplace deviance," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 249-272, March.
    11. Feinberg, Matthew & Ford, Brett Q. & Flynn, Francis J., 2020. "Rethinking reappraisal: The double-edged sword of regulating negative emotions in the workplace," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 1-19.
    12. Lages, Cristiana R. & Perez-Vega, Rodrigo & Kadić-Maglajlić, Selma & Borghei-Razavi, Niloofar, 2023. "A systematic review and bibliometric analysis of the dark side of customer behavior: An integrative customer incivility framework," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    13. Jeremy D. Mackey & John D. Bishoff & Shanna R. Daniels & Wayne A. Hochwarter & Gerald R. Ferris, 2019. "Incivility’s Relationship with Workplace Outcomes: Enactment as a Boundary Condition in Two Samples," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 155(2), pages 513-528, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:170:y:2024:i:c:s0148296323007087. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.