Dissertation
Let me speak to your manager!: employee responses to leader loyalty during customer mistreatment encounters
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Summer 2025
DOI: 10.17077/etd.006754
Abstract
Customer mistreatment of employees is becoming increasingly common in the workplace. Yet, customer mistreatment research has focused almost entirely on how leaders can help employees recover after customer mistreatment has already happened rather than how leaders can actively manage customer mistreatment while it is happening. As a result, the ways in which leaders inevitably react during customer mistreatment are diverse, and the ultimate effectiveness of these active customer mistreatment management strategies remains untested. Drawing on both drama triangle theory and social exchange theory, I argue that leaders’ loyalty to employees targeted by customer mistreatment will foster employee-leader trust, culminating in increased leader-directed OCB and customer service. Conversely, leaders’ lack of loyalty to employees targeted by customer mistreatment will hinder employee-leader trust, resulting in increased leader-directed CWB and customer sabotage. Finally, these relationships hinge on leaders’ simultaneous loyalty to customers during customer mistreatment encounters, such that the relationships associated with leaders’ loyalty to employees are weakened, and the relationships associated with leaders’ lack of loyalty to employees are strengthened, when paired with leaders’ simultaneous loyalty to customers. I tested these hypotheses using both a field study and a vignette experiment, utilizing customer-facing employees from a variety of industries and occupations as participants for both studies. Across both studies, I found that leader loyalty to the employee increases trust, which in turn increases leader-directed OCB, increases customer service, and to some degree decreases leader-directed CWB. I also found that the leader loyalty to the customer negatively moderated these relationships, but only in the experimental study. This research extends the customer mistreatment literature, contextualizes LMX with respect to customers, and adds nuance to drama triangle theory.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Let me speak to your manager!: employee responses to leader loyalty during customer mistreatment encounters
- Creators
- Stephen M. Reid
- Contributors
- Stephen H. Courtright (Advisor)Amy E. Colbert (Committee Member)Jennifer D. Nahrgang (Committee Member)Daniel W. Newton (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Business Administration (Management)
- Date degree season
- Summer 2025
- DOI
- 10.17077/etd.006754
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- 182 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2025 Stephen Reid
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 06/18/2025
- Description illustrations
- Illustrations, graphs, charts, tables
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 105-119).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
Service employees are increasingly mistreated by customers during service interactions. Paired with the contemporary shift in modern work towards more customer-facing and service-oriented roles, the need for effective customer mistreatment management is more crucial now than ever before. Yet, customer mistreatment research has focused almost entirely on how leaders can help employees recover after customer mistreatment has already happened rather than how leaders can actively manage customer mistreatment while it is happening. This thesis addresses this gap by exploring how a leader s loyalty to the targeted employee during customer mistreatment, as well as the leader s loyalty to the mistreating customer, impact the employee s trust in the leader and subsequent helpful and harmful behaviors towards leaders and customers. Through both a field study and an experimental study, I discover that leader loyalty to the employee during customer mistreatment leads to higher trust from the employee in the leader, which in turn leads the employee to be more helpful towards the leader and customers in the future. I also find some evidence that this increased trust buffers the employee s future harmful behaviors towards the employee. Finally, I find that the more that the leader is loyal to the customer during customer mistreatment, the weaker the relationship between leader loyalty and trust, impacting later behaviors. This thesis has meaningful implications for both leaders and organizations.
- Academic Unit
- Tippie College of Business
- Record Identifier
- 9984948642202771
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