Management and Marketing - Theses

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Start date: 2010 × End date: 2019 × Subject: co-creation × Subject: coping ×

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    Frontline service employee improvisation
    Vredenburg, Jessica Michelle ( 2014)
    Customer participation in professional services is growing in popularity due to proclaimed benefits for customers and firms such as increased customer satisfaction and firm profitability. With the co-creation of value being touted as the ‘next frontier’ in competitive advantage (Bendapudi and Leone 2003) many firms are indeed encouraging the trend towards customer participation. What has been overlooked for the most part thus far however is that the frontline service employee who interacts directly with customers may in fact experience an increase in their role stress due to the inherent uncertainty that accompanies customer participation. In this study, the concept of service employee improvisation is proposed as a coping strategy both to augment the favorable effects of customer participation for the customer and the firm while at the same time offsetting the potential negative effect on the employee. The concept of improvisation is first explored conceptually in paper I, in order to identify the construct and component parts and locate it within a nomological network of antecedents and outcomes. This is then followed up with two empirical studies in the context of professional health services in paper II. Paper II empirically examines the hypothesized positive relationships between both customer participation, customer satisfaction and employee role stress respectively, as well the moderating effect of service employee improvisation on these relationships. Although the moderating effect of improvisation on the relationship between customer participation and customer satisfaction was not found to be significant, the effect of improvisation on the relationship between customer participation and role stress was significant, with service employees reporting higher levels of improvisation experiencing a reduction in role stress as customer participation increased, as well as lower overall role stress at higher levels of customer participation. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are also discussed.