Family ostracism and proactive customer service performance: An explanation from conservation of resources theory

Despite the burgeoning interest in work-family conflict, little is known about how family stressors influences employees’ attitudes and behaviors in the workplace. This study focused on family ostracism and investigated its impact on employees’ proactive customer service performance (PCSP). Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study further examined the mediating role of emotional exhaustion and the moderating role of family centrality. Using time-lagged data from 264 supervisor-follower dyads of two hotels in the mainland of China, this study found that family ostracism negatively affected employees’ PCSP by eliciting emotional exhaustion. In addition, the findings indicated that family centrality strengthened the direct effect of family ostracism on emotional exhaustion and the indirect effect of family ostracism on PCSP via emotional exhaustion such that the relationships were stronger when family centrality was high. Finally, this study discussed the theoretical implications of these results and provided practical several implications for organizations.