A Conceptual Model of Service Providers’ Psychological Resilience at the Workplace

Abstract

This project answers a recent call from the Transformative Service Research (TSR) movement (Anderson et al. 2013) to address a lack of research in understanding the well-being of service providers. In addition, this research also addresses a pressing issue to counteract management problems such as increase turnover rate (Bardoel et al. 2014), which is prevalent in certain service industries such as the hospitality and the retail sectors. Service providers, being boundary spanners, often experience emotional stressors due to conflicting job roles and demands from both internal (within the organisation) and external (e.g., customers) environments (e.g., Lings et al. 2010). This leads to burnout, which creates a psychological strain on service providers that can have serious detrimental consequences for the psychological well-being of employees. Positive psychology literature found that positive emotions serve as markers of flourishing, or optimal well-being (Fredrickson 2001). In an ideal scenario, management would want service employees to be happy and well at all times. However, this is unrealistic. To this end, this research proposes a conceptual model that studies the role of psychological resilience in buffering and regulating service employee’s well-being. Psychological resilience is defined as “the capacity for recovery and maintained adaptive behaviour that may follow initial retreat or incapacity upon initiating a stressful event” (Garmezy 1991, p. 459). The Resilience Framework Model (Kumpfer 2011) is used as the theoretical underpinning in identifying individuals’ internal self-resiliency characteristics. Specifically, work locus of control, general health, self-efficacy, emotional regulation, and job competence are proposed as drivers of service employees’ resilience at work. Next, the model investigates the links between psychological resilience of service employees and well-being, and work-related outcomes such as retention, job satisfaction, and engagement. As an extension of this study, moderating effects such as gender and work duration are studied. To the best of knowledge, prior research has not proposed a model of service employees’ psychological resilience. This research is timely as it answers a gap in the TSR and Management/Human Resource literature. It can also provide useful insights to service organisations, to develop strategies to improve staff well-being, retention, and also for recruitment purposes. References available upon request.