Journal article
Who's the Boss? Contending with Competing Expectations from Customers and Management
The Academy of Management executive (1993), v 16(4), pp 85-95
01 Nov 2002
Abstract
Customer-contact workers routinely face competing expectations from management and customers. While management expects customer-contact workers to follow their rules in order to provide efficient and consistent high-quality service, customers often have needs and requests that require customer-contact workers to bend the rules in order to fulfill them. When customers, through commissions, tips, or other means, directly reward these customer-contact workers, the dilemma becomes even more intense. While this problem is well-established, we know little about how and why customer-contact workers choose between satisfying customer or management expectations. Our study examines the process that customer-contact workers go through to make this choice. By developing psychological contracts with both customers and management, customer-contact workers balance the costs and benefits associated with meeting/not meeting their competing expectations. In order to mitigate the problem of customer-contact workers choosing to satisfy the customer at the expense of management, managers need to develop relational contracts with their employees.
Metrics
Details
- Title
- Who's the Boss? Contending with Competing Expectations from Customers and Management
- Creators
- Kimberly A. EddlestonDeborah L. KidderBarrie E. Litzky
- Publication Details
- The Academy of Management executive (1993), v 16(4), pp 85-95
- Publisher
- Academy of Management
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000180552300013
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-0036880430
- Other Identifier
- 991021884112904721
InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Management