Customer negative events, employee citizenship behaviors towards customers and service sabotage: The moderating roles of customer orientation and display rules and the mediating roles of employee perspective taking and negative moods

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In the service industries, customer negative event (CNE) has become one of the stressors at workplace and has negative effects on service providers and organizations. Therefore, understanding how CNE influence employees'' service behaviors is an important issue. Previous studies have found that CNE leads to negative outcomes during the service delivery process; however, how CNE influences employee positive outcomes were less discussed. The main purpose of this study is to investigate “when” and “how” CNE influences both positive and negative service behaviors. Specifically, the present study examines the relationships between CNE, employee citizenship behaviors towards customers (OCBC) and service sabotage and whether customer orientation/display rules moderate the relationships between CNE and OCBC/service sabotage. Finally, I also examined whether the proposed moderating effects are explained by cognitive (perspective taking) or affective (negative moods) mechanisms. The sample was composed of 237 service workers-customers dyads from various service industries. The results of the hierarchical regression analyses showed that CNE negatively associated with OCBC while positively associated with service sabotage. In addition, customer orientation weakened the negative relationship between CNE and OCBC through enhancing employee perspective taking, while display rules weakened the positive relationship between CNE and service sabotage through reducing employee negative moods. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.