The Socialization of Customer-Contact Employees in Service Organizations: Effects on Employee Behaviors and Service Quality Outcomes (Hotel Industry)

Abstract

Many organizations experience problems in the implementation of marketing strategy. This can be especially true of service organizations where customer-contact employees are ultimately responsible for the delivery of high quality services. Because of the importance of these employees, service organizations must be capable of training and socializing them to deliver the highest quality service possible. Through training and socialization, employees learn the goals, values, and expected behaviors within the organization. Drawing from existing theory in services marketing and organizational behavior, this dissertation develops and tests a positive model of the service quality socialization process. The socialization practices used by service organizations are examined to assess their impact on employee behaviors that are crucial to the delivery of service quality. In addition, the impact of these employee behaviors on perceived service quality is assessed. The data were collected from three nationwide hotel chains. Questionnaires were completed by hotel general managers, employees, and actual hotel guests. Two hundred fifty hotel units responded with a total of 2,037 returned questionnaires. After matching and aggregating responses, all measures were subjected to reliability and validity tests. Hypothesis testing took place within a path-analytic framework. Overall, the findings indicate that socialization practices have a profound impact on employee behavior. One practice--providing employees with a precise sequence of training stages--was found to be particularly effective in increasing desirable employee behaviors. Three employee behaviors were found to have a negative impact on perceived service quality: supervisor role conflict, job role ambiguity, and satisfaction. Since the negative impact of satisfaction was not anticipated, its relationship with service quality was further explored. The extended analysis uncovered a curvilinear relationship; where both low and high levels of satisfaction are associated with higher levels of perceived service quality. The findings suggest that managers should choose carefully among different socialization practices in order to ensure desirable employee responses. Likewise, managers should clearly specify expectations to prevent employees from experiencing higher levels of role conflict and ambiguity. Finally, the relationship between satisfaction and service quality suggests that managers should carefully consider quality improvement efforts that have negative effects on employee satisfaction.