Conceptualizing employees' behavioral pattern changes by experiencing customer mistreatment: Integrating moral self-regulation and dual process model perspectives

This conceptual paper has two aims. The first is to explain how frontline employees' workplace sabotage initially occurs when frontline employees experience perceived mistreatment from customers. Moral outrage arises among frontline employees and mediates the relationship between customer mistreatment and workplace sabotage. The second aim is to address changes in frontline employees' behavioral patterns during working hours. Initial negative workplace behaviors (workplace sabotage) are more likely to shift to good behavior (organizational citizenship behavior toward customer; OCB-customer) due to a need for moral cleansing, but will eventually revert to negative behaviors (additional workplace sabotage) as continuous customer mistreatment increases stress. To understand this process, moral-self regulation theory and the dual process model are introduced to support the conceptual model. Implications and future research directions are also discussed. Ce rapport conceptuel a deux objectifs. Premierement, il vise a expliquer comment le sabotage au travail des employes de premiere ligne se produit initialement lorsque ceux-ci se sentent maltraites par les clients. L'indignation morale apparait chez les employes de premiere ligne et sert de mediateur a la relation entre le maltraitement des clients et le sabotage au travail. Le deuxieme objectif est d'etudier les changements de comportement des employes de premiere ligne pendant les heures de travail. Les comportements negatifs initiaux en milieu de travail (sabotage au travail) sont plus susceptibles de se transformer en un bon comportement (comportement de citoyennete organisationnelle envers le client) en raison d'un besoin de purification morale, mais ils finiront par revenir a des comportements negatifs (sabotage supplementaire au travail) a mesure que la maltraitance continue des clients augmente le stress. Pour comprendre ce processus, la theorie de l'autoregulation morale et le modele du double processus sont introduits pour appuyer le modele conceptuel. Des implications et des orientations de recherche futures sont egalement discutees.