›› 2020, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (5): 243-254.

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Displaced Aggression: How does Customer Mistreatment Influence Employees' Counterproductive Work Behaviors?

Zhao Hongdan, Wu Zhen, Liu Weiwei   

  1. School of Management, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444
  • Received:2017-07-29 Online:2020-05-28 Published:2020-06-03

Abstract:

Although more and more researchers start to concern customer mistreatment, it is still difficult to explain the concatenated mistreatments among consumers, organizational agents and employees. Based on the theory of displaced aggression, we examine the mediating and moderating relationships among customer mistreatment, organization-based self-esteem, counterproductive work behavior (CWB) and perceived organizational support. Using 271 supervisor-subordinate dyads as samples, we find that: (1) customer mistreatment has a positive correlation with organization-directed CWB (CWB-O), but has no significant correlation with individual-directed CWB (CWB-I); (2) organization-based self-esteem mediates the relationship between customer mistreatment and CWB; (3) perceived organizational support moderates the strength of the mediating relationship between customer mistreatment and CWB via organization-based self-esteem, such that the mediating relationship is stronger under low-perceived organizational support than under high-perceived organizational support.

Key words: customer mistreatment, organization-based self-esteem, counterproductive work behavior, perceived organizational support