职场排斥视角下服务破坏动因及机制研究——基于酒店一线服务员工的实证研究

Research on Antecedents and Mechanisms of Service Sabotage from the Perspective of Workplace Ostracism:An Empirical Study of Hotel Frontline Service Employees

在当前我国酒店服务行业蓬勃发展的背景下,发生在服务情境中的破坏行为日趋普遍。文章基于资源保存理论,以和谐式工作激情为中介和心理顽强性为调节,探索了职场排斥对酒店员工服务破坏的影响。通过基于3个时间点获取了来自6家酒店的341份员工-领导配对问卷调查,分析结果显示:(1)职场排斥能够对员工服务破坏产生显著的正向影响;(2)和谐式工作激情在职场排斥与员工服务破坏之间起中介作用;(3)员工心理顽强性对职场排斥与和谐式工作激情之间的关系具有显著负向调节效应,员工心理顽强性越高,二者之间的负向关系越弱;(4)心理顽强性还能够进一步调节职场排斥通过和谐式工作激情对服务破坏的间接影响,当员工的心理顽强性水平较高时,职场排斥通过和谐式工作激情对服务破坏的间接影响会被削弱。

Service sabotage refers to the intentional behaviors of service employees that interfere with customer service and harm customer interests. With the vigorous development of hotel service industry in China, the phenomenon of employee service sabotage when serving customers is becoming increasingly common. To mitigate the adverse effects of sabotage in service enterprises, a growing body of research focuses on the antecedents of service sabotage. However, there are several shortcomings in existing research. For example, although many existing studies examine the impacts of interpersonal interactions on service sabotage, these works mainly focus on the interpersonal interactions between employees and their supervisors or between employees and customers, while neglecting the interpersonal interactions between employees and their colleagues.Therefore, this study aims to fill this void by employing a new perspective of workplace ostracism-an important type of interpersonal interaction between employees and their colleagues-to explore the antecedents and mechanisms of service sabotage in the hotel context. Specifically, based on conservation of resources(COR) theory, this study investigates the effect of workplace ostracism on hotel frontline employees’ service sabotage by introducing harmonious work passion as a mediator and psychological hardiness as a moderator. We conducted a three-wave survey in six hotels in Guangdong Province and collected 341 valid employee-supervisor pairing data.We use Structural Equation Modeling and the bootstrapping method to analyze the data. The results show that(1) workplace ostracism has a significant positive impact on employees’ service sabotage,(2) harmonious work passion mediates the relationship between workplace ostracism and employees’ service sabotage,(3) employees’ psychological hardiness moderates the relationship between workplace ostracism and harmonious work passion, and(4) employees’ psychological hardiness further moderates the indirect effect of workplace ostracism on employees’ service sabotage through harmonious work passion.Our findings offer several important contributions to the literature on workplace ostracism,harmonious work passion, and negative behaviors in the service industry. First, we construct and empirically examine a conceptual framework that integrates a negative behavior in the service industry(service sabotage) and a crucial workplace stressor(workplace ostracism) with interpersonal interactions. Our results specifically demonstrate the association between workplace ostracism and lower harmonious work passion, which further deteriorates sabotage behaviors among service employees. Second, in line with the COR theory, we find that harmonious work passion is a crucial intervening mechanism that explains the relationship between workplace ostracism and service sabotage. Third, we examine the moderating role of psychological hardiness on the relationship between workplace ostracism and harmonious work passion, which reveals a new and crucial boundary condition of the effects of workplace ostracism.In terms of management practice, our finding that workplace ostracism predicts service sabotage emphasizes to hotel managers the importance of keeping interpersonal interactions among employees in mind. They could provide their employees with prompt and appropriate assistance to deal with ostracism, such as providing psychological counselling services. Particularly, hotel managers should create and maintain a flourishing work atmosphere to enhance employees’ confidence and ability to handle workplace stressors, such as ostracism.