TY - JOUR
T1 - Do Employee Citizenship Behaviors Lead to Customer Citizenship Behaviors? The Roles of Dual Identification and Service Climate
AU - Chan, Wa Kimmy
AU - Gong, Taeshik
AU - Zhang, Ruixue
AU - Zhou, Mingjian
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research is supported by the Hong Kong SAR GRF research grants awarded to the first author (590613H/HKBU590613) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) grant awarded to the last author (No. 70702010).
PY - 2017/8/1
Y1 - 2017/8/1
N2 - This study pertains to whether and how employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors toward customers (OCB-C) influence customers’ citizenship behaviors (CCB) directed toward the firm, employees, and other customers. Drawing on a social exchange perspective, this study proposes that a dual identification mechanism—spanning customer-employee identification (C-EI) and customer-firm identification (C-FI)—mediates the social exchange relationship between OCB toward customers (OCB-C) and CCB. Service climate as a key contextual factor moderates the mediating mechanisms of identification. With data collected from a field survey and an experiment, the findings confirm that the dual identification mechanism mediates the effect of OCB-C on customers’ reciprocation with CCB. The results also reveal a moderating effect of service climate, such that the positive effect of OCB-C on C-EI and C-FI grows stronger when the service climate is at low and high levels, respectively. In addition, the empirical results demonstrate that the underlying motive attribution explains the moderating effect of service climate. This work paints a more nuanced picture of the missing link in the OCB-C-CCB interface by identifying a mediating mechanism and boundary condition. To promote CCB, managers should leverage their employees’ OCB-C as well as their firms’ service climate.
AB - This study pertains to whether and how employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors toward customers (OCB-C) influence customers’ citizenship behaviors (CCB) directed toward the firm, employees, and other customers. Drawing on a social exchange perspective, this study proposes that a dual identification mechanism—spanning customer-employee identification (C-EI) and customer-firm identification (C-FI)—mediates the social exchange relationship between OCB toward customers (OCB-C) and CCB. Service climate as a key contextual factor moderates the mediating mechanisms of identification. With data collected from a field survey and an experiment, the findings confirm that the dual identification mechanism mediates the effect of OCB-C on customers’ reciprocation with CCB. The results also reveal a moderating effect of service climate, such that the positive effect of OCB-C on C-EI and C-FI grows stronger when the service climate is at low and high levels, respectively. In addition, the empirical results demonstrate that the underlying motive attribution explains the moderating effect of service climate. This work paints a more nuanced picture of the missing link in the OCB-C-CCB interface by identifying a mediating mechanism and boundary condition. To promote CCB, managers should leverage their employees’ OCB-C as well as their firms’ service climate.
KW - customer citizenship behaviors
KW - customer identification
KW - organizational citizenship behaviors
KW - service climate
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85023743146&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1094670517706159
DO - 10.1177/1094670517706159
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85023743146
SN - 1094-6705
VL - 20
SP - 259
EP - 274
JO - Journal of Service Research
JF - Journal of Service Research
IS - 3
ER -