International Journal of Bank Marketing

Relationships between organizational support, customer orientation, and work

outcomes: A study of frontline bank employees
Ugur Yavas Emin Babakus
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Ugur Yavas Emin Babakus, (2010),"Relationships between organizational support, customer orientation,
and work outcomes", International Journal of Bank Marketing, Vol. 28 Iss 3 pp. 222 - 238
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IJBM
28,3 Relationships between
organizational support, customer
orientation, and work outcomes
222
A study of frontline bank employees
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Received October 2009

Accepted December 2009
Ugur Yavas
East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, USA, and
Emin Babakus
The University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

Abstract
Purpose – This paper seeks to examine the nature of relationships between six organizational
support mechanisms, a personal resource, and selected psychological and behavioral work outcomes.
A related objective of the study is to uncover whether these relationships exhibit similar patterns
between employees with different characteristics.
Design/methodology/approach – Data for the study were collected from the employees of a large
bank in New Zealand. Usable responses were obtained from 530 employees.
Findings – Results show that supervisory support is most closely associated with psychological
work outcomes. On the other hand, job performance is more susceptible to influences of service
technology and empowerment. Also customer orientation, as a personal resource, impacts job
performance.
Research limitations/implications – Using multiple-informants (e.g. measuring frontline
employees’ job performance on the basis of their supervisors’ or customers’ assessments) would
help minimize common-method variance. To cross-validate our results, replication studies among
other samples of frontline employees in banking as well as other service settings are in order.
Practical implications – To fuel greater affective organizational commitment and job satisfaction
among frontline employees and to reduce their turnover intentions, management must take proactive
actions for the frontline employees to receive support and encouragement from their supervisors.
Instituting a structured mentoring program and providing training programs to supervisors in
support skills can also pay dividends.
Originality/value – The study shows that an undifferentiated approach is warranted in managing
employees. Similar strategies would be equally effective in inducing favorable and reducing negative
affective and performance outcomes among employees with different demographic characteristics.
Keywords Banking, Employees, Customer orientation, Business support services, New Zealand
Paper type Research paper

International Journal of Bank Introduction

Marketing
Vol. 28 No. 3, 2010
Regulatory, structural and technological factors have significantly changed the
pp. 222-238 banking environment throughout the world (Angur et al., 1999). In a milieu becoming
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0265-2323
increasingly competitive, bank executives realize that creating and maintaining a loyal
DOI 10.1108/02652321011036477 customer base is a key to their survival and success (see Yavas et al., 1997).
 Accordingly, they design multi-pronged strategies to deliver quality service to A study of
customers and enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. Such executives also frontline bank
recognize that no strategy aimed at satisfaction and retention of external customers
can be considered complete unless it includes programs for reaching and winning over
employees
internal customers (Schneider and White, 2004). Viewed particularly important in this
context are the frontline employees who, because of their boundary-spanning roles,
play a crucial role in service delivery and building relationships with customers 223
(Babakus et al., 2003). Being direct participants in implementing the marketing concept
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(Brown et al., 2002), frontline employees’ attitudes and behaviors towards customers
determine customers’ perceived service quality, satisfaction and emotional
commitment to an organization (Henning-Thurau, 2004; Yoon et al., 2001). Frontline
employees also have the capability, more so than other employees in an organization,
for returning aggrieved customers to a state of satisfaction after a service failure occurs
(Yavas et al., 2004).
Not surprisingly, bank executives view retention of motivated, satisfied and
committed frontline employees as important to business success as customer
satisfaction and retention (see Yavas et al., 1997). A question that begs an answer is:
what support mechanisms and resources induce positive and reduce negative work
outcomes among frontline bank employees? In this study, we seek an answer to this
decidedly critical question. Specifically, we investigate the nature of relationships
between several organizational support factors and a personal resource, and selected
psychological and behavioral work outcomes. A related objective of our study is to
uncover whether these relationships exhibit similar patterns between employees with
different characteristics. We use frontline bank employees in New Zealand as our study
setting.
A study addressing these issues is relevant and significant for several reasons.
First, while some studies in the past have examined the relationships between
organizational support and work outcomes among frontline employees in other
service sectors (Bakker et al., 2004; Demerouti et al., 2001) and other countries (e.g.
Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004), there is a paucity of research addressing this topic in the
context of banking in general and New Zealand in particular. Second, previous
studies have been limited in terms of the number of resources and/or outcomes they
include in their conceptualization and scope. In this study, we use a comprehensive
list of seven antecedent (six organizational support resources and a personal resource)
and four work outcome (three psychological outcomes and a behavioral outcome)
variables and investigate their interrelationships. Third, the findings from the study
can provide bank executives in New Zealand with valuable insights in ways of
enhancing positive and reducing negative work outcomes of their frontline
employees. Furthermore, an understanding of the role of background
characteristics is vital to managers in determining if, for instance, an
undifferentiated or a differentiated (e.g. gender-specific) approach is warranted in
managing frontline employees (Alexandrov et al., 2007).
In the next section we present the relevant literature. This is followed by
discussions of the method and results of our empirical study. We conclude with
implications of the results and suggestions for future research.
 IJBM Relevant literature
28,3 Organizational support
Inspired by the works of Bakker et al. (2004), Halbesleben and Buckley (2004), and
Lytle et al. (1998), we define organizational support as a set of enduring policies,
practices, procedures and tools that:
.
diminish the demands of the job; and/or
224 .
assist employees in achieving their work goals and stimulate their personal
growth/development.
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Such support may be physical, psychological or social in nature and may be located at
the organizational and task levels, in interpersonal/social relations and the
organization of work. Organizational support can be in the forms of performance
feedback, skill variety, autonomy, job security, training, salary, supervisory support,
empowerment, team climate, rewards, career opportunities, servant leadership and
service technology support (Babakus et al., 2003; Bakker, Demerouti, Taris, Schaufeli
and Schreurs, 2003; Baker, Demerouti, de Boer and Schaufeli 2003; Ben-Zur and Yagil,
2005; Demerouti et al., 2001; Lewig and Dollard, 2003; Lytle et al., 1998; Maslach, 2005;
Wilk and Moynihan, 2005). In our study, we focus on six organizational resources that
are widely recognized as being crucial to organizational success and outcomes. They
are supervisory support, training, servant leadership, rewards, empowerment and
service technology support (Babakus et al., 2003; Demerouti et al., 2001; Lytle et al.,
1998).
Supervisory support (Bell et al., 2004; Babin and Boles, 1996) refers to the
willingness of the supervisors to go to bat for their subordinates. It manifests itself in
the encouragement and concern supervisors provide to their subordinates. According
to the reciprocity rule as employees receive greater support from their supervisors,
their sense of obligation to reciprocate with greater effort increases.
Training programs sponsored by an organization can improve employees’
task-related and behavioral skills, enhance their capability to deal with varying
customer needs, personalities and circumstances effectively. Employees who receive
training become more capable and motivated, and provide higher levels of service. In
contrast, employees who do not possess the requisite job and interpersonal skills fail to
provide satisfactory service and cannot deal with customer demands and complaints
effectively (Boshoff and Allen, 2000). Training not only helps develop skills and
creative thinking necessary to serve customers effectively, but also sends a strong
signal to frontline employees regarding top management’s commitment to service
quality (Babakus et al., 2003). Servant leadership (Lytle et al., 1998) reflects the
managerial service behaviors, which conspicuously direct and shape the service
climate in an organization through example rather than simply dictating service
policies.
Rewards characterize inducements employees receive from their organization,
including compensation, esteem, status and social identity. Particularly monetary
rewards count a lot in frontline service jobs, which are generally low paying positions
(Babakus et al., 2003; Forrester, 2000). Having appropriate reward policies in place
induces frontline employees to deliver high quality services to customers and to deal
with customer complaints effectively (see Lytle et al., 1998). On the other hand, lack of
rewards creates an unpleasant environment and diminishes employees’ work efforts
and/or may cause them to withdraw from the job.
 Empowerment refers to the freedom and ability to make decisions and A study of
commitments (Forrester, 2000). It entails a set of managerial activities and practices,
which provide employees with power, authority and control, and involves
frontline bank
transmission of power to those who are less powerful in an organization (Ergeneli employees
et al., 2007). Empowerment enhances employees’ problem solving capability and helps
them to reach their full potential. Empowered employees have the responsibility and
authority to act quickly without a long chain of command (see Babakus et al., 2003). 225
Service technology support encompasses provision of sophisticated and integrated
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tools to employees (Lytle et al., 1998). Such support enables frontline employees to be
free from routine tasks and gives them more time to deal with customers. Technology
can elevate the competitive advantage of a service organization by enhancing
employees’ capacity to offer superior service to their customers.

Customer orientation as a personal resource

Customer orientation, which has been studied both at the organizational and individual
worker levels, is one of marketing’s most celebrated concepts (see Deshpande et al.,
1993; Donavan et al., 2004; Henning-Thurau, 2004; Kohli and Jaworski, 1990; Narver
and Slater, 1990). At the organizational level, customer orientation is an integral
component of a market orientation (Deshpande et al., 1993; Narver and Slater, 1990),
which provides a unifying focus for the activities of an organization and serves as a
vehicle for the implementation of the time-honored marketing concept as a business
philosophy (Kohli and Jaworski, 1990). A firm’s customer orientation is not only a
potent path to business success, but also results in desirable employee outcomes
(Henning-Thurau, 2004; Jaworski and Kohli, 1993).
At the individual level, customer orientation describes a personal resource of an
employee and is defined as “an employee’s tendency or predisposition to meet
customer needs in an on-the-job context” (Brown et al., 2002, p. 111). Customer
orientation, as a personal resource, may serve as an antidote to the detrimental effects
of job demands and can lead to delivery of superior customer service, especially when
combined with organizational support. Among others, customer-oriented employees
exhibit strong concern for others’ needs, optimism and cheerfulness. They also show
low levels of nervousness and frustration during service encounters. Customer
orientation makes employees more capable of “serving with a smile”, with less
“emotional labor” or “acting” (see Grandey, 2003).
Perhaps more importantly, customer orientation positively influences an employee’s
job satisfaction and commitment (Donavan et al., 2004). In this study, we draw on the
conceptualization of customer orientation at the individual worker level (Brown et al.,
2002) and treat it as a personal resource.

Work outcomes
In various contextual settings, research in marketing and management has focused on
a number of work outcomes ranging from affective organizational commitment to
turnover intentions to job performance (e.g. Donavan et al., 2004; Ogaard, 2006; Yavas
et al., 2008). As discussed by Rhoads et al. (1994) and Singh et al. (1996), these outcomes
can be dichotomized into psychological (e.g. job satisfaction, tension) and behavioral
outcomes (e.g. turnover, job performance). Psychological outcomes reflect employees’
psychological approach or avoidance attitudes toward their jobs while behavioral
outcomes reflect employees’ performance results. In our study, we focus on three
 IJBM psychological (affective organizational commitment, job satisfaction and turnover
intentions) and a behavioral outcome (job performance). Under Rhoads et al.’s (1994)
28,3 and Singh et al.’s (1996) taxonomy, turnover intentions represent the avoidance aspect
of psychological outcomes. Turnover intentions, in turn, are recognized as precursors
to actual turnover (e.g. Allen et al., 2003; Jackofsky, 1984), which is a behavioral
outcome (Rhoads et al., 1994).
226 Affective organizational commitment refers to an attitude in the form of an
attachment between an individual and his/her organization. It is reflected in the
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relative strength of an individual’s psychological identification and involvement with

the organization (Mowday et al., 1979). Job satisfaction reflects a positive affective state
resulting from an employee’s overall assessment (i.e. not any specific aspect(s)) of
his/her job (Babin and Boles, 1998; Singh et al., 1996). Performance refers to an
employee’s assessment of his/her performance relative to his/her peers on job-related
behaviors and results (Babin and Boles, 1998; Singh et al., 1996). Finally, turnover
intentions reflect employees’ thoughts about quitting the organization they work for
(Singh et al., 1996).
Past research, albeit not simultaneously using all the independent and dependent
variables we include here, demonstrates that organizational support and work
outcomes are related. Research, for instance, reveals that supervisory support leads
employees to exert more effort in the workplace (Brown and Peterson, 1994; Den
Hartog and Verburg, 2002; Schneider and Bowen, 1993), enhances employees’ positive
attitudes toward their work and reduces their turnover intentions (Babin and Boles,
1996; Bell et al., 2004; Ito and Brotheridge, 2005). Training programs in task-related and
behavioral skills enhance employees’ affective commitment to their organization (Tsui
et al., 1997) and reduce their turnover intentions (Cheng and Brown, 1998). Empowered
employees exhibit lower turnover intentions (Bowen and Lawler, 1992). Likewise, an
organization’s reward structure has a significant impact on employee loyalty and
commitment (Lawler, 2000). Rewards reduce employees’ turnover intentions as well
(Podsakoff et al., 2006).
Prior research also reveals that the variables within our dependent variable set may
also be interrelated. For instance a meta-analysis (Jaramillo et al., 2005) shows that
there is a significant relationship between organizational commitment and job
performance. Job satisfaction as well demonstrates a significant relationship with job
performance (Babakus et al., 2003). Both job satisfaction and affective organizational
commitment depict negative relationships with turnover intentions (Alexandrov et al.,
2007). While the research is not monotonic in support, the weight of the evidence also
suggests that job performance and turnover intentions are related (Jackofsky, 1984).

Method
Sample
To achieve the purposes of the study, data were collected from boundary-spanning
employees of a large bank in New Zealand who spent their time dealing directly with
customers for transactions and/or responding to customer queries, problems and
complaints. Specifically, 724 questionnaires were distributed to employees working in
50 branches of the bank via the bank’s intranet. The manager of each bank wrote a
memo to the employees and requested their cooperation. Employees were given
assurance of confidentiality and allowed to respond to the survey anonymously during
work hours. The responses were transferred into a data file at the corporate office
 under the supervision of a member of the research team. By the cutoff date for data A study of
collection, 530 usable surveys were received for a response rate of 73.2 percent. The
number of responses across the bank branches ranged from five to 27 with an average
frontline bank
of 10.6 responses per branch. employees
Over three-quarters of the respondents (76.2 percent) were female. In total, 58
percent had secondary education and 31.4 percent had college/university education or
more. Respondents were spread across all age groups with 20.7 percent between the 227
ages of 18 and 24, 25.8 percent between the ages of 25 and 34, 22.6 percent between the
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ages of 35 and 44, 18.7 percent between the ages of 45 and 54 and 12.2 percent 55 years
and older. A comparison of the sample profile to the company records indicated that
the sample was representative of the population of frontline employees.

Measurement
Dependent variables. Affective organizational commitment was operationalized via six
items from Mowday et al. (1979). Six items each adapted from Babin and Boles (1998)
were used to measure job satisfaction and performance. Turnover intentions, was
measured with four items adapted from Singh et al. (1996) and Boshoff and Allen
(2000). Responses to each of these items were elicited on five-point scales ranging from
5 ¼ strongly agree to 1 ¼ strongly disagree. Statements were scored in such a way
that higher scores indicated higher levels of affective organizational commitment, job
satisfaction, job performance and turnover intentions.
Independent variables. Three items from Bell et al. (2004) were used to measure
supervisory support. A four-item scale was used to measure training (Rogg et al., 2001).
Servant leadership (six items) and empowerment (two items) were measured with
items adapted from Lytle et al. (1998). Service technology support (four items) and
rewards (three items) were measured using items adapted from Lytle et al. (1998) and
Johnson (1996).
Customer orientation was measured via 13 items from Donavan et al. (2004).
Responses to each of these items were also obtained on five-point scales ranging from
5 ¼ strongly agree to 1 ¼ strongly disagree. Again because of the scoring system
used, higher scores indicated higher levels of supervisory support, training, servant
leadership, rewards, empowerment, service-technology support and customer
orientation. Age and education were measured using five-point scales with higher
scores indicating older age and higher education. During the analysis stage, these
variables were reduced to a binary (0/1) form (see the Appendix). Gender was recorded
as 1 ¼ female and 0 ¼ male.
In designing the questionnaire, items comprising the perceptual dependent and
independent variables were separated in an effort to reduce single-source method bias
(Podsakoff et al., 2003). As shown previously, the internal consistency reliabilities of
the measures with the exception of the rewards measure (a ¼ 0.62) exceeded the
recommended minimum threshold value of 0.70 (Nunnally, 1978). Prior to
administering in the field, the questionnaire was pre-tested with a pilot sample of 25
employees and no changes in the wording of the questions were deemed necessary.

Results
Canonical correlation analysis was employed to examine the relationships between the
independent and the dependent variables described in the preceding section. This
technique is particularly useful in situations where, as is the case here, there are
 IJBM multiple dependent variables and correlations exist between and within variable sets
28,3 (Hair et al., 1998). The simplest way to view canonical analysis is as a kind of
double-barreled principle components analysis. Given a correlation matrix
representing the between and within correlations of two sets of variables, the
analysis derives successive pairs of linear functions of independent and dependent
variable sets. The functions are maximally correlated between the variable sets while
228 mutually uncorrelated within the sets. The first pair of canonical functions extracts the
maximum variance possible, the second pair extracts the maximum variance not
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accounted for by the first pair and successive canonical functions are extracted in the
same fashion.
In canonical correlation analysis, the maximum number of canonical functions that
can be extracted from the independent and the dependent variable sets equals the
number of variables in the smaller set. Since the smaller set in the present study (i.e. the
dependent set) consists of four variables, a maximum of four canonical functions can
be extracted. As in principal components analysis, the objective of canonical analysis is
to summarize the complex multivariate relationship between the two sets of variables
in a smaller number of canonical variates (linear composites or combinations) without
too much loss of information. Considering the criteria (i.e. statistical significance of the
function and the magnitude of the canonical correlations depicting the bivariate
correlations between the independent and the dependent linear composites)
recommended by Hair et al. (1998), in this study two canonical functions were
retained. Both functions were significant (Function 1: F ¼ 16.48, p , 0:0001 and
Function 2: F ¼ 2.41, p , 0:001). As shown in Table I, the canonical correlations
between the dependent and independent variates of the first and the second functions
were 0.80 and 0.30 respectively.
In interpreting the underlying structures of the independent and the dependent
variable composites, canonical loadings can be used. Also referred to as structure

Function
1 2

Dependent variables
Affective organizational commitment 20.93 0.26
Job satisfaction 20.88 0.22
Job performance 20.25 2 0.75
Turnover intentions 0.59 2 0.24
Independent variables
Supervisory support 20.64 0.52
Training 20.57 0.35
Servant leadership 20.66 0.39
Rewards 20.58 0.21
Empowerment 20.11 2 0.42
Service technology 20.59 0.39
Customer orientation 20.32 2 0.85
Age 0.06 0.17
Gender 20.12 2 0.03
Table I. Education 20.23 0.008
Canonical loadings Canonical correlation 0.80 0.30
 correlations, loadings measure the simple linear correlations between an original A study of
observed variable in the independent (or dependent) set and the set’s canonical variate.
As can be seen from the loadings presented in Table I, the first dependent variate was
frontline bank
characterized by affective organizational commitment, job satisfaction and turnover employees
intentions. On the other hand, job performance was at the root of the dependent variate
of the second function. An inspection of the loadings of the independent variables
revealed that gender and education were more closely associated with the first 229
independent variate. The second independent variate, on the other hand, depicted
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closer association with age. Customer orientation and empowerment also had high
loadings on this variate.
Having determined the underlying structures of the variates, in the next phase of
analysis, an attempt was made to obtain insights into which independent variables had
the most influence in relation to the dependent variable composites (i.e. variates). The
standardized canonical coefficients, which are analogous to standardized beta
coefficients in multiple regression, and the weights we calculated based on these
coefficients revealed some interesting results. As shown in Table II, supervisory
support had the most impact on the first dependent variate (i.e. affective outcomes). A
close scrutiny of the results revealed that the second dependent variate (i.e. job
performance) was most susceptible to influences of customer orientation followed by
service technology and empowerment. Overall, the background characteristics did not
have much impact on the dependent variates and collectively accounted for 10 percent
of the weight in each case. Furthermore, their relative impacts on the dependent
variates were comparable.

Discussion
Several inferences surface from our results. First, our findings demonstrate that earlier
findings based on studies conducted in other service sectors and countries can be
extended to banking and New Zealand. Second, our results show that different forms of

Function
n 1 relative weights n 2 relative weights

Dependent variables
Affective organizational commitment 2 0.58 0.38 0.49 0.24
Job satisfaction 2 0.53 0.35 0.33 0.16
Job performance 2 0.30 0.20 2 1.17 0.57
Turnover intentions 2 0.11 0.07 0.07 0.03
Independent variables
Supervisory support 2 0.77 0.42 0.27 0.11
Training 2 0.14 0.08 0.07 0.03
Servant leadership 0.04 0.02 0.02 0.01
Rewards 2 0.03 0.01 2 0.25 0.10
Empowerment 2 0.16 0.09 2 0.47 0.19
Service technology 2 0.22 0.12 0.48 0.20
Table II.
Customer orientation 2 0.29 0.16 2 0.61 0.25
Standardized canonical
Age 0.11 0.06 0.10 0.04
correlations and relative
Gender 0.02 0.01 0.06 0.02
weights
Education 0.06 0.03 0.12 0.05
 IJBM organizational support are associated with different work outcomes. For instance, the
results suggest that supervisory support is most closely associated with affective work
28,3 outcomes. On the other hand, job performance is more likely to be impacted by service
technology and empowerment. Third, our results also confirm that work outcomes can
be dichotomized into psychological (organizational commitment, job satisfaction and
turnover intentions) and behavioral outcome ( job performance) categories as discussed
230 by Rhoads et al. (1994) and Singh et al. (1996). Fourth, however, these work outcomes
do not seem to show any variations across employee characteristics.
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Finally, an intriguing result of our study is the impact of customer orientation (a

personal resource) on job performance more so than psychological outcomes. Some
plausible explanations can be offered for this finding. Customer orientation
encompasses an internal drive to engage in such customer-satisfying behaviors as
finding and promptly delivering solutions to customer problems, being well-prepared
and organized during customer interactions, approaching customers with natural ease
and confidence, treating customers with both kindness and politeness, maintaining a
consistent level of emotionality during customer interactions and a natural propensity
to enjoy work (see Cran, 1994; Donavan et al., 2004; Gwinner et al., 2005; Surprenant
and Solomon, 1987). Also agreeableness, a basic personality trait, which reflects
cooperation and service to others, is at the root of customer orientation (Brown et al.,
2002; Licata et al., 2003). Customer-oriented frontline employees perform well in the
workplace as they are predisposed to enjoying the work of serving customers (Brown
et al., 2002; Donavan et al., 2004).
In addition, it may be surmised that, customer orientation may actually serve as an
antidote to job demands and play an instrumental role in increasing job resources. For
instance, when a frontline employee lacks adequate information and procedures to
accomplish a required task, customer orientation may serve as internal compass and
provide clear, well-defined guidelines to reduce uncertainties and ambiguities inherent
in that task (Jones et al., 2003). Also, customer orientation may alleviate the negative
effects of conflicts in a job environment as it enables employees to control a threatening
situation with calm and emotional stability (Donavan et al., 2004; Surprenant and
Solomon, 1987; Winstead, 2000). Furthermore, customer orientation may lead
employees to find more effective and creative ways of serving customers, which
may actually reduce work overload. Similarly, customer orientation may encourage
employees to seek more resources from management to better serve customers. All of
these factors may explain the strong impact of customer orientation on job
performance.

Managerial implications
Perhaps the most important managerial implication emerging from this study is that
an undifferentiated approach would pay dividends in managing employees. In other
words, similar strategies would be equally effective in inducing favorable and reducing
negative affective and performance outcomes among employees with different
demographic characteristics. Results of the study suggest that to fuel greater affective
organizational commitment and job satisfaction among frontline employees and to
reduce their turnover intentions, management must take proactive actions for the
frontline employees to receive support and encouragement from their supervisors. In
this context, actions such as instituting a structured mentoring program and providing
training programs to supervisors in support skills, for instance, can pay dividends.
 Support given to subordinates should not be limited to emotional support but should A study of
also include informational support. When employees’ beliefs in their supervisors’
reliability, dependability, competence and willingness to help subordinates increases
frontline bank
as a result of mentoring programs, then, among others, subordinates’ job satisfaction employees
would improve and their withdrawal tendencies from their jobs would diminish.
Likewise, to improve employee performance, employees must be empowered. In
empowering employees, giving them more power and authority should not be the only 231
goal. In addition, employees’ psychological empowerment should be enhanced.
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Psychological empowerment reflects whether or not employees perceive themselves as

being empowered. As Ergeneli et al. (2007) discuss, if employees do not behave as
expected when power and control are transferred to them, this may be due to lack of
awareness of the fact that they are empowered. Also given the study results, employees
must be provided with requisite service technologies to further enhance their
performance.
Finally, the linkage between customer orientation and job performance leads to an
interesting managerial implication. Customer orientation entails such personality traits
as enjoying serving others, being caring and calm, and showing emotional stability in
stressful situations. All of these traits are particularly fitting for frontline service jobs.
Given that a good fit between a person’s abilities and personality and the requirements
of a job leads to better job outcomes (see Donavan et al., 2004), management should
recruit and select frontline employees who possess customer orientation qualities. This
would necessitate incorporating predictors of customer orientation into the service
worker selection process. Also management should consider making customer
orientation an explicit component of periodic employee evaluations to align its broader
policies to nourish and nurture employees’ customer orientation over the long run.
It should be remembered that as discussed in Schneider and White’s (2004) the
“customer-linkage” model and more specifically in Heskett et al.’s (1994) the
“service-profit chain” model, any managerial actions to improve employees’ affective
and performance job outcomes would lead not only to better customer outcomes (e.g.
customer loyalty, customer satisfaction) but also stimulate such desirable
organizational outcomes as profits and growth.

Limitations and future research directions

Although this study contributes to our knowledge base, viable prospects for further
research remain. First, the constructs in this study were developed by responses from
the same participants. This may potentially provide biased estimates of model
parameters. To avoid the problem in future studies, multiple sources should be used in
data collection and, for instance, job performance should be measured via responses
from supervisors and/or customers. Second, in this study we used frontline employees
of a single company in a single country in a single industry and at a single point in
time. This may have led to sampling artifacts and ignored the potential temporal
dynamics of the relationships. Therefore, generalizations beyond the specific context of
this research must be guarded. Replications in New Zealand and elsewhere among
frontline employees in banking as well as other service settings are in order for
conclusive generalizations. Likewise, longitudinal designs would help determine the
causal relationships among the study variables. Third, our focus in this study was on
the individual frontline employee as the unit of analysis and we did not differentiate
between employees of small vs. large branches. Possible psychological climate and
 IJBM management style variances emanating from the size of a branch may have
28,3 confounded the results. Hence, investigation of the impact of branch size on the
relationships studied here is a worthy topic for future research.

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pp. 3-19.
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perceptions of service quality: test of a causal model”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 83
No. 2, pp. 150-63.
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Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 53-79.
 IJBM Appendix. Study variables
Dependent variables
28,3 Affective organizational commitment (adapted from Mowday et al., 1979) (a ¼ 0.89):
(1) I talk up this bank to my friends as a great organization to work for.
(2) I find that my values and the bank’s values are very similar.
(3) I am proud to tell others that I work for this bank.
236 (4) This bank inspires the very best in me in the way of job performance.
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(5) I really care about the future of this bank.

(6) This bank earned my complete loyalty.
Job satisfaction (adapted from Babin and Boles, 1998) (a ¼ 0.91):
(1) My job is very pleasant.
(2) I am highly satisfied with my job.
(3) I am very enthusiastic about my work.
(4) I find real enjoyment in my work.
(5) I definitely dislike my job.
(6) My job is very worthwhile.
Job performance (adapted from Babin and Boles, 1998) (a ¼ 0.76):
(1) I am a top performer.
(2) I get along with customers better than others.
(3) My performance is in the top 10 percent.
(4) I consistently deliver better quality service than others.
(5) I have been rated consistently as a star performer.
(6) I go out of my way to help customers.
Turnover intentions (adapted from Singh et al., 1996; Boshoff and Allen, 2000) (a ¼ 0.82):
(1) I will probably be looking for another job soon.
(2) I often think about quitting.
(3) I will quit this job sometime in the next year.
(4) It would not take too much to make me resign from this bank.
Independent variables
Supervisory support (adapted from Bell et al., 2004) (a ¼ 0.86):
(1) My boss is very concerned about the welfare of those under him/her.
(2) My boss is willing to listen to work-related problems.
(3) My boss can be relied on when things get difficult at work.
Training (adapted from Rogg et al., 2001) (a ¼ 0.82):
(1) At this bank, sufficient time is allocated for training.
(2) At this bank, sufficient money is allocated for training.
(3) At this bank, training programs are consistently evaluated.
(4) At this bank, training programs focus on how to improve service quality.
Servant leadership (adapted from Lytle et al., 1998) (a ¼ 0.90):
(1) Management constantly communicates the importance of service quality
 (2) Management regularly spends time “in the field” or “on the floor” with customers and A study of
frontline employees.
frontline bank
(3) Management is constantly measuring service quality.
(4) Managers give personal input and leadership into creating quality service.
employees
(5) Management provides resources, not just “lip service, to enhance our ability to provide
excellence service.
(6) Management shows they care about service by constantly giving of themselves. 237
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Rewards (adapted from Lytle et al., 1998; Johnson, 1996) (a ¼ 0.62):

(1) We have financial incentives for service excellence.
(2) I receive visible recognition when I excel in serving customers.
(3) My promotion depends on the quality of service I deliver.
Empowerment (adapted from Lytle et al., 1998):
(1) I often make important customer decisions without seeking management approval.
(2) I have the freedom and authority to act independently in order to provide service
excellence.
Service technology/support (adapted from Lytle et al., 1998; Johnson, 1996) (a ¼ 0.83):
(1) We have “state of the art” technology to enhance our service quality.
(2) Sufficient money is allocated for technology to support my efforts to deliver better
service.
(3) I have the necessary technology support to serve my customers better.
(4) Management works hard to make our systems and processes more customer-friendly.
Customer orientation (adapted from Donavan et al., 2004) (a ¼ 0.86):
(1) I enjoy nurturing my customers.
(2) I take pleasure in making every customer feel like he/she is the only customer.
(3) Every customer problem is important to me.
(4) I thrive on giving individual attention to each customer.
(5) I naturally read the customer to identify his/her needs.
(6) I generally know what customers want before they ask.
(7) I enjoy anticipating the needs of customers.
(8) I am inclined to read the customer’s body language to determine how much interaction to
give.
(9) I enjoy delivering the intended service on time.
(10) I find a great deal of satisfaction in completing tasks precisely for customers.
(11) I enjoy having the confidence to provide good service.
(12) I enjoy remembering my customers’ names.
(13) I enjoy getting to know my customers personally.
Age
1 ¼ 18-34, 0 ¼ 35 and older.

Gender
1 ¼ female, 0 ¼ male.
 IJBM Education
1 ¼ less than college, 0 ¼ college or more.
28,3 Responses to statements comprising each multi-item variable were elicited on five-point
scales ranging from 5 ¼ Strongly agree to 1 ¼ Strongly disagree.

About the authors

Ugur Yavas is Professor of Marketing and Advisory Board Faculty Fellow at East Tennessee
238 State University. Besides the International Journal of Bank Marketing, he has contributed to such
journals as the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science,
Downloaded by COCHIN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY At 23:26 17 October 2014 (PT)

Journal of Service Research, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Business and Industrial
Marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, European Journal of Marketing,
International Journal of Service Industry Management, Journal of Services Marketing, Journal of
Consumer Marketing, Journal of World Business, Management Decision, and Long Range
Planning.
Emin Babakus is First Tennessee Professor and Professor of Marketing at the University of
Memphis. He has contributed to such journals as the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of
the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of
Service Research, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Services Marketing, Decision Sciences, Journal of
Business Research, European Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Service Industry
Management, and Journal of Advertising Research. Emin Babakus is the corresponding author
and can be contacted at: ebabakus@memphis.edu

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