Business Commons^™

How Observed Customer Mistreatment Of Supervisors Affects Employees’ Service Sabotage: A Cross-Cultural Examination From The Deontic Justice Theory, Wen Jiang, Cass Shum, Hyounae (Kelly) Min, Ye Ding

Hospitality Faculty Research

Research on customer mistreatment has focused on victims’ perspectives with scant research on third-party observers’ reactions, especially their reactions to customer mistreatment of supervisors. Drawing on the deontic justice theory, this research investigates how and when customer mistreatment of supervisors impacts frontline employees. Using a mixed-method of three studies (experiment, time-lagged survey, field survey) from two countries (the U.S. and China), this research demonstrates the spillover effects of customer mistreatment of supervisors on employee’s service sabotage via moral anger. Study 1 showed that hospitality employees’ moral anger mediated the relationship between customer mistreatment of their supervisors on employees’ service sabotage. …