UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Bùi Xuân Quỳnh ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOMES OF CUSTOMER INCIVILITY: A STUDY OF FRONTLINE EMPLOYEES IN VIETNAM’S RETAIL INDUSTRY MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018 1 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Bùi Xuân Quỳnh ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOMES OF CUSTOMER INCIVILITY: A STUDY OF FRONTLINE EMPLOYEES IN VIETNAM’S RETAIL INDUSTRY MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION SUPERVISOR: Dr. NGUYỄN THỊ MAI TRANG ID: 22150054 Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018 2 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Acknowledgement Apart from the efforts of me, the on time completion of the thesis largely on the encouragement and guidelines of many others. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the people who have been instrumental in the successful completion of this thesis. I would like to express my appreciation to Dr.
Nguyễn Thị Mai Trang – my instructor. She provided me with tremendous support, help and motivations. Without her instructions and guidance, I would not materialized this thesis. The guidance and supports received from ISB, classmates, friends and family are also very important to me.
I am grateful for their constant support and help. 3 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Antecedents and outcomes of customer incivility: A study of frontline employees in Vietnam retail industry Abstract One of the big challenges of retail industry is improve the service quality to catch up with the growth of economics. In order to improve the service quality, mandatory corporate emotional expression rules commonly employed; which is in turn, affect the frontline employee emotional well-being and increase turn-over intention – another big challenge of retail industry. Workplace incivility and emotional labor somehow exist in the middle of this conflict; where they have been attended by researchers, and receiving more attention as its practical potential and importance.
The study examined five constructs including: experienced supervisor incivility, experienced co-worker incivility, customer incivility, emotional labor and quality of work life; which are possible antecedents, mediators and outcome of customer incivility. A face-to-face survey with the target of 300 valid samples conducted with frontline employees in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The results support all hypotheses; whereas experienced supervisor incivility and experienced co-worker incivility are antecedents of customer incivility; customer incivility is found related to quality of work life – a non-negative outcome. Surface acting and deep acting, the two dimensions of emotional labor are found as mediators in the relation between customer incivility and quality of work life with inconsistent effects addressing the importance of workplace incivility and positive roles of emotional labor which further study should attend.
4 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Table of Contents 1. Theoretical background and hypotheses .1 Customer incivility and its antecedents .2 Quality of work life .1 Procedure and sample. Data analyses results .1 Confirmatory Factor Analysis .2 Hypotheses testing – Structural Equation Model (SEM) .1 Implications for theory and research .2 Implications for managers .4 Limitations and implications for future research .1 Qualitative data collection procedures, guidelines and transcripts. 73 5 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com List of figures and tables Table 1: Recent studies of workplace incivility antecedents.
18 Figure 1: Research model. 24 Table 2: Sample characteristics. 27 Table 3: Data collection. 28 Table 4: EFA results.
29 Table 5: CFA Model fit. 31 Table 7: SEM Model fit. 32 Table 8: Structural paths – SEM. 32 Table 9: Mediation tests.
33 6 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Introduction Retail industry holds a very important part in the economic; in 2016, total retail sales worldwide estimated to reach 22.049 trillion US$ and forecasted to continue to grow (“Total retail sales worldwide, 2015-2020 (trillions and % change)”, 2017). As other industries, retail industry facing multiple challenges; which two noticeable challenges are the necessity to improve the retail service quality when the growth of economics pushing the growth of retail industry (Vargo, Maglio, & Akaka, 2008), and retaining salespeople or service employees, who interact face-to-face with customers and often referred to as frontline employees, as high turnover is recognized as critical problem to the industry (Freemen, 2017; Kern & Grandey, 2009; Han, Bonn, & Cho, 2016). In order to improve the retail service quality, retailers often apply strict and strong mandatory emotion expression rules to their frontline employees; however, mandatory emotion expression rules often associate with faking emotions which may negatively affect the frontline employees and reduce the job outcomes of frontline employees, increase turnover intention (Grandey, 2003; Kim, Jung-Eun Yoo, Lee, & Kim, 2012).
The retail industry of Vietnam shows quite similarities; where the economy is forecasted to continue to grow (Thanh Thom, 2017), and considered as a transition market which in the world’s top 30 countries with most attractive retail market. Vietnam industry revenue of 2017 is estimated to reach almost 130 billion US$ (Hùng Lê, 2018); and holds at least 50% of total businesses registered and employs almost three million labors (Nguyên Vũ, 2016), in which a large portion of these employees are working at the frontline and providing services to customer directly with face-to-face contact. High 7 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com turnover is addressed as a critical challenge to Vietnam retailers, results of a recent survey show that 28% of employers in retail industry find frontline employees not have long-term commitment and 49% address that frontline employees are not persistent when approached by another retail employer (Nam Dương, 2017). Vietnam retailers also employ mandatory emotion expression rules for their frontline employees to improve retail service quality; and not an exception, Vietnam retailers still not yet paid sufficient attention to the affects maybe produced and harm their business as well as the well-being of their frontline employees.
Concern the negative effects on the well-being of frontline employees; in 2016, there are many cases of customer aggressions made the news in Vietnam (Quốc Huy, 2016; Hoàng Đan, 2016; Tuấn Phùng, 2016); these are highlighted physical aggressive actions where the customers punched and slabbed the frontline employees which involve single or few individuals where the victims (frontline employees) were traumatized and/or hospitalized; the lower intensity cases which involve large crowd of Vietnamese were gone unreported. However, when using keywords “Supermarket culture of Vietnamese” searching on the internet, the results will show multiple news articles on the “bad habits” or “bad behavior” of Vietnamese in supermarket or public places (Bảo Phương, 2016; Thu Hà, 2016; T.Anh, 2012), which mostly concern the “uncivilized” behavior of Vietnamese in supermarket and public places through the viewpoint of other customers upon the occurrence of their discomforting emotions in such circumstances. Though, they are customers, they only experience these behaviors occasionally; meanwhile, supermarket employees or more broadly – frontline employees are possibly 8 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com have to experience these behaviors with a much higher frequency. These behaviors are considered as “interpersonal mistreatment” and “sub-form of counterproductive” (Vagharseyyedin, 2015, p.
116); which often addressed as workplace incivility and recognized as counterproductive work behavior which reduce the productivity of the organization and employee (Fox, Spector, & Miles, 2001; Anderson & Pearson, 1999). Evidences of the negative relationship between workplace incivility and employee’s well- being have been found in multiple industries and contexts (Cortina, Magley, Williams, & Langhout, 2001; Han, Bonn, & Cho, 2015), and “comparable with low intensity stress” which can have emotionally and physically negative effect (Han et al. Customer incivility is identified as one of the negative factors which relates to the use of emotion of frontline employees and increase turnover intention; which has been gathered substantial attention of researchers (Grandey, 2003; Han et al. The incivility behavior occurred in workplace has not been well attended, and Vietnam is not an exception; because the corporate as well as the employee are not fully aware of its harmful potential to the whole organization (Torkelson, Holm, Backstrom, & Schad, 2016).
Furthermore, the incivility behavior could be produced due to the lack of norms of civility and uncivility (Walsh, Magley, Reeves, Davies-Schrils, Marmet, & Gallus, 2012); especially in a growing market like Vietnam where the retail service quality standard is continuously increased. Workplace incivility is studied by researchers under three dimensions: supervisor incivility, co-worker incivility and customer incivility; recently, the suggestion of “family incivility” and “employee incivility” by Hur, Moon, and Han (2015, p. 407); and Walker, Jaarsveld, and Skarlicki (2014). 9 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Previous studies found noticeable effects of customer incivility on frontline service employees (Cho, Bonn, Han, & Lee, 2016; Han et al., 2016; Laschinger, Leiter, Day, & Gilin, 2009; Hur et al., 2015); the related factors studied as increase turnover intention (Han et al., 2016), decrease service performance (Cho et al., 2016), recruitment and retention (Laschinger et al.
The studies of customer incivility have been conducted in Asia countries such as Korea (Cho et al., 2016), China (Chen, Ferris, Kwan, Yan, Zhou, & Hong, 2013), Malaysia (Santos, Mustafa, & Gwi, 2014), and Thailand (Akkawanitcha, Patterson, Buranapin, & Kantabutra, 2014) where negative effects are found. However, only little studies attempted to find the antecedents of workplace incivility and especially customer incivility (Hershcovis & Barling, 2010; Bartlett, Bartlett, & Reio, 2008; Lanzo, Aziz, & Wuensch, 2015; Hur, Moon, & Jun, 2016). Lanzo et al. 175) note “An examination of the antecedents of workplace incivility is a novel area of study”, “did not address the question who likely to be uncivil as a result of stress” and future research should examine the instigator of the workplace incivility.
Workplace incivility is proved to have strong relation with emotional exhaustion and mediated by surface acting and deep acting which are the two dimensions of emotional labor (Hur et al. Decreasing in service performance, increase turnover intention, and reducing organization commitment are studied outcomes of customer incivility (Cho et al. Emotional labor concept was initiated by Hochschild (1983), which is a form of emotional regulation but different to emotional intelligent; and previously proved to have negative effects on individual (employee) as well as 10 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Previous study conceptualizes surface acting and deep acting are two dimensions of emotional labor; and findings support the stronger negative effect of surface acting on emotional exhaustion than deep acting (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002; Grandey, 2000; Hwa, 2012; Hur et al.
97) posits emotional labor as the process where employee managing their “feelings and expressions” toward the goal set by the organization. Emotional labor and emotional exhaustion proved by prior studies to have strong relation (Grandey, 2003; Grandey & Frone, 2007); and both emotional labor and emotional exhaustion found related to employee outcomes and employee well-being; which in turn are work attitudes, job performance, organization citizenship, affective commitment, job satisfaction, customer service performance, organization commitment, and turnover intention (Cho et al., 2016; Sliter, Jex, Wolford, & McInnerney, 2010; Hur et al., 2014; Walsh et al., 2015; Cropanzano, Rupp, & Byrne, 2003). On the other hand; Sirgy et al. 242) define quality of work life as “employee satisfaction with a variety of needs through resources, activities and outcomes stemming from participation in the workplace”; and suggest that quality of work life “may have a significant impact on employee behavioral responses, such as organizational identification, job performance, intention to quit, organization turnover, personal alienation” (Sirgy et al.
Quality of work life was first introduced by Hackman & Oldham (1976) and received large amount of attention where the authors referred as “quality of working life”. 11 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Contradiction in the viewpoints of employers and employees in retail industry revealed in a recent survey in Vietnam, employees have concern on organization culture (99%) through working environment, human factors, and organization vision; meanwhile 51% of the interviewed employers see the compliance with the organization culture is mandatory and 40% are not (Nam Dương, 2017). Mandatory compliance with organization culture often associate with strong mandatory emotional expression rules.