Relationship of organizational citizenship behaviors and customer orientation to service quality and customer satisfaction
Description
Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) is performance that supports the social and psychological environment in which job-specific tasks function (Organ, 1997). Researchers have mainly examined the variables that predict an employee's OCB (e.g., Organ and Konovsky, 1989). However, the OCB literature points out that OCBs also may have important consequences for an organization (e.g., Organ, 1988). Moreover, OCBs mainly have been investigated at the individual level of analysis; that is, studies have viewed OCBs as individually exhibited behaviors. Yet, OCBs may also be displayed at the group level (e.g., George, 1990). OCB at the group level is defined as helping behaviors shared by members of a group that help create or support the environment where core activities take place. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine hypothesized relationships between OCB at the group level and two important organizational outcomes: service quality and customer satisfaction. Additionally, it was hypothesized that a marketing variable, Customer Orientation Behavior (COB), leads organizations and service employees to create value for their customers (Narver and Slater, 1990) and at the group level, to have a positive relationship with service quality and customer satisfaction. This study also included tests of additive and multiplicative effects of OCB and COB in the prediction of customer service evaluations. Results show that at the group level OCBs may lead to better perceptions of service quality however, OCB relationships with customer satisfaction results were generally not significant. Tests of additive and multiplicative effects of OCB and COB in the prediction of customer service evaluations were not supported. Finally, a post-hoc analysis shows a probable nonlinear relationship between the variables under study.