Conceptualizing employees' behavioral pattern changes by experiencing customer mistreatment: Integrating moral self-regulation and dual process model perspectives

Abstract

This conceptual paper has two aims. The first is to explain how frontline employees' workplace sabotage initially occurs when frontline employees experience perceived mistreatment from customers. Moral outrage arises among frontline employees and mediates the relationship between customer mistreatment and workplace sabotage. The second aim is to address changes in frontline employees' behavioral patterns during working hours. Initial negative workplace behaviors (workplace sabotage) are more likely to shift to good behavior (organizational citizenship behavior toward customer; OCB-customer) due to a need for moral cleansing, but will eventually revert to negative behaviors (additional workplace sabotage) as continuous customer mistreatment increases stress. To understand this process, moral-self regulation theory and the dual process model are introduced to support the conceptual model. Implications and future research directions are also discussed.