Customer misbehavior and store managers' work‐to‐family enrichment: The moderated mediation effect of work meaningfulness and organizational affective commitment

• Author: Cheris W. C. Chow,Angela J. Xu,Raymond Loi,Jonathan M. L. Kwok
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21883
• Date: 01 September 2018

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Customer misbehavior and store managers' work-to-family

enrichment: The moderated mediation effect of work

meaningfulness and organizational affective commitment

Raymond Loi

1

| Angela J. Xu

2

| Cheris W. C. Chow

1

| Jonathan M. L. Kwok

3

1

University of Macau, Taipa, Macau

2

Jinan University, Guangzhou, China P. R.

3

Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Yau Ma

Tei, Hong Kong

Correspondence

Angela J. Xu, School of Management, Jinan

University, No.601, Huangpu Avenue West,

Tianhe District, Guangzhou, China

E-mail: xujieangela@163.com

Funding information

University of Macau, Grant/Award number:

MYRG2014-00090-FBA

With the growing research interest in work–family enrichment, this study explores how nega-

tive workplace phenomenon affects store managers' experience of work-to-family enrichment.

Using two-wave survey data collected from 156 retail store managers who had frequent inter-

actions with customers, we found that customer misbehavior had a negative effect on their

work-to-family enrichment through work meaningfulness. Furthermore, store managers' organi-

zational affective commitment acted as an effective buffer on such negative relationship. Our

findings thus fill in one missing piece in the current work–family enrichment literature and carry

important implications for organizations to help retail store managers attain work meaningful-

ness and enrich their family life.

KEYWORDS

customer misbehavior, organizational affective commitment, work–family enrichment, work

meaningfulness

1|INTRODUCTION

In the past decade, there has been increasing research attention on

work–family enrichment, defined as the extent to which experiences

in one role (work/family) improve the quality of life in the other role

(family/work) (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006). In particular, studying how

resources generated from employees' work role can be transferred to

their family role such that employees' overall performance and posi-

tive affect will be enhanced (i.e., work-to-family enrichment; Wayne,

2009) is of interest to researchers and practitioners since this direc-

tion of enrichment is more likely to be affected by workplace phe-

nomena and provides practical implications for human resource

managers to incorporate necessary interventions (Chen & Powell,

2012; McNall, Nicklin, & Masuda, 2010).

Despite the empirical evidence on the antecedents of work-to-

family enrichment that has accumulated, several important research

gaps still remain. First, previous studies mainly focus on how positive

organizational phenomena (e.g., family supportive organizational poli-

cies, idiosyncratic deals) can foster work-to-family enrichment

(Carlson, Ferguson, Kacmar, Grzywacz, & Whitten, 2011; Tang &

Hornung, 2015). Less is known about whether negative workplace

phenomena may hinder it. Second, there is a lack of research examin-

ing the possible influences of other stakeholders outside the organi-

zation (e.g., customers) on employees' work-to-family enrichment.

Third, relatively little research (e.g., Zhang, Kwan, Everett, & Jian,

2012) has examined work-to-family enrichment of managers who

possess a broad set of job skills to enrich their family role. As such,

our existing knowledge on this research remains incomplete.

In this study, we focus on investigating how customer misbeha-

vior exerts a negative impact on retail store managers' work-to-family

enrichment. Customer misbehavior refers to the dysfunctional cus-

tomer behavior in service settings that violates generally accepted

norms of conduct and which is commonly viewed as disreputable

(Daunt & Harris, 2012a). Typical misbehaviors include verbal and

physical abuse, breaking company policies, lack of cooperation, or

rudeness (Harris & Reynolds, 2003). Drawing on the literatures from

work-family enrichment theory and Hackman and Oldham's (1976)

job characteristics model in relation to experienced meaningfulness

of the work, we argue that encountering misbehaved customers

reduces retail store managers' work meaningfulness, referring to the

amount of significance people perceive in their work (Rosso, Dekas, &

Wrzesniewski, 2010), which, in turn, worsens their work-to-family

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21883

Hum Resour Manage. 2018;57:1039–1048. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1039