Customer evaluations of service-oriented organizational citizenship behaviors: Agentic and communal differences

Research shows that service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) influences customer attitudes. In a series of two experiments, the interaction between customer gender and the type of service-oriented OCB (communal or agentic) performed by a female (Study 1) or male (Study 2) service employee was examined using a sample of hospitality recruiters. Study 1 showed that both male and female customers rated the female employee performing the agentic OCB equally, but female customers rated the female employee performing the communal OCB higher than male customers. The results from Study 1 did not emerge for the male employee in Study 2. These results suggest that the interaction effect between the service-oriented OCB type and customer gender only influences customer reactions for female employees, but not for male employees. The results show that the evaluation of service-oriented OCB is particularly susceptible to the influence of gender-role stereotypes.