The form of organisational citizenship behaviours varies depending on the type of the organisation. Service type organisations must meet customers’ individual needs when offering services or building organisational images (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993; Spence et al., 2014). Thus, it is necessary for them to explore deeper into the subject of OCBs, especially behaviours demonstrated by the contact employees in the service industries (Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1997). Currently, only few studies are related to service oriented organisational citizenship behaviour.
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However, the majority of them are focused on the OCBs of employees in the manufacturing industries (for example Bettencourt et al., 2001; Hsu, Lin & Chang, 2010; Weng, Lai & Li, 2010). Very few researches explored the behavioural relationship demonstrated by the increasing population of service personnel. In the service industries, service personnel are subjected to frequent contact with customers, and close relationships are often formed between these two parties, despite the varied needs of different customers. Service-oriented OCBs are represented by enthusiasm, courteous demeanour, and the willingness to offer quality services in order to satisfy customers’ needs (Cran, 1994; Hogan, Hogan & Busch, 1984; Spence, Brown & Heller, 2011). Therefore, the manifestation of service-oriented OCBs not only builds an effective bridge of communication between the organisation and customers, but
In this relation, to target the role characteristics of the service contact employees, Bettencourt et al., (2001) proposed a three service-oriented OCBs which are loyalty, service delivery, and participation. They argued that previous research identifies three fundamental roles of customer-contact employees of service firms that derive from their unique position as boundary spanners of the firm and that correspond to the three citizenship dimensions of Van-Dyne, Graham and Dienesch (1994).
First, these employees act as representatives of the firm to outsiders and can enhance or diminish organizational image. Thus, it is important for these employees to engage in loyalty OCBs—acting as advocates to outsiders not only of the organization's products and services but also of its image (Spence et al., 2014). Second, customer-contact employees provide a strategic link between the external environment and internal operations by providing information about customer needs and suggested improvements in service delivery. Thus, contact employee participation
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OCBs - taking individual initiative, especially in communications, to improve service delivery by the organization, coworkers, and oneself - are fundamental to the firm's ability to meet the changing needs of its customers. Finally, conscientious role performance is also critical for contact employees, especially concerning behaviors that directly impact customers. Research on service quality reveals the importance of reliable, responsive, and courteous service delivery behaviors of customer-contact employees. Therefore, they suggested that it is essential that contact employees perform services delivery OCBs—behaving in a conscientious manner in activities surrounding service delivery to customers. Hence, with the above arguments, they proposed the three service-oriented OCBs which are loyalty, service delivery, and participation (Trougakos, Beal, Cheng, Hideg & Zweig, 2015). They used prior citizenship and service-quality studies as their basis of adapting and developing a 16- item measure of service oriented OCBs, which were used to measure service oriented OCBs in this study.
These three components of service oriented OCB are explained as follows:-
i. Loyalty
Service contact employees not only provide services to customers. They must project the image as advocates of the organization who proactively guard the rights and make all attempts to improve the organization’s corporate image (Schneider & Bowen, 1993; Wang, Liao, Zhan & Shi, 2011). Therefore, it is important that service contact employees demonstrate organizational citizenship behaviors.
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Service personnel must demonstrate reliability, trustworthiness and courteous demeanour during service delivery. Their service behaviors directly affect the customers’ intent to purchase and the level of satisfaction. Therefore, dutiful and dedicated role performance is also very important. (George, 1991; Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1988; Van Dijk & Kluger, 2011).
iii. Participation
To effectively link the external environment to the internal process, service personnel must proactively supply customers the information they need, as well as proposed suggestions to the management for the improvement of the services (Schneider & Bowen, 1993; Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1988; Schaubroeck, Lam & Peng, 2016).
Contrary to general OCB, SO-OCB refers to customer contact employees’ discretionary behaviours that extend beyond the employees’ formal role requirements when servicing customers (Bettencourt & Brown, 1997; Kim, Hornung & Rousseau, 2011). Service-oriented (or customer-oriented) OCB can be defined as citizenship behaviours performed by customer contact employees targeted at customers” (Bettencourt et al., 2001). With the growth of service economy, customer contact employees’ service-oriented behaviours are vital for organisational success in gaining customer loyalty and customer retention (Colwell et al., 2009).
Given this nature of SO-OCB, various SO-OCB dimensions have been identified. As mentioned earlier, among various SO-OCB dimensions, Bettencourt et al., (2001) three-dimensional SO-OCB typology has been commonly discussed in the
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literature. Specifically, Bettencourt et al., (2001) typology includes service employees’ loyalty, participation, and service delivery. Loyalty is exhibited when an employee advocates to outsiders his or her organization’s products, services, and image. Participation describes an employee initiatives that help improve his or her as well as co-workers’ and the organization’s service delivery. Service delivery refers to an employee’s conscientious behaviour when delivering service to customers. Because SO-OCB is conceptually different from general OCB (Jiang et al., 2011), few studies have paid particular attention to SO-OCB. For example, Schneider et al., (2005) and Mathieu, Aguinis, Culpepper and Chen (2012) found that service leadership significantly affected service climate, which in turn resulted in SO-OCB and customer satisfaction.
Drawing upon the social exchange theory, the study by Coyle-Shapiro, Morrow and Kessler (2006) demonstrated that perceived organizational support was an antecedent of service-oriented, discretionary behaviour. On the other hand, Payne and Webber (2006) showed that higher levels of employee job satisfaction and affective commitment resulted in more SO-OCB exhibited by employees. Sun et al., (2007) conducted a multi-level analysis of SO-OCB, and discovered that SO-OCB was associated with turnover rate and productivity. In a longitudinal study conducted by Wang (2009), it was revealed that perceived organizational support had a positive impact on SO-OCB and this relationship was strengthened by service climate. In a recent study, Jain et al., (2012) showed that volunteerism exhibited by salespeople predicted their SO-OCB. This brief review on the OCB and SO-OCB literature has suggested their importance on organizational functioning. In spite of what we know about SO-OCB, we still have limited knowledge on the relationship between employee commitment and SO-OCB (Miner, & Glomb, 2010).
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In summary, service contact employees serve as a link between the external customers and the internal management operations. Therefore, the organisation expects contact employees to respond to customers’ requests with courteous manners and give customers a sense of trustworthiness. Compared with other categorisation relating to OCBs, the dimensions of loyalty, service delivery, and participation best reflect customers’ perceptions on the quality of the services and level of satisfaction (Huang, 2006; O’Fallon & Butterfield, 2011).
Therefore, this research aims to verify that employee satisfaction and perceived organisational service orientation affects employee commitment which in turn mediates service oriented organisational citizenship behaviours demonstrated by the contact employees.