| Author: | Wong, Siu-ping Christine |
| Title: | The key to service excellence : separate or joint impact of leader-member exchange and service climate on employees' service performance |
| Degree: | D.B.A. |
| Year: | 2006 |
| Subject: | Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations. Service industries -- Quality control. Customer services -- Quality control. |
| Department: | Graduate School of Business |
| Pages: | vii, 194 leaves ; 30 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | To create a competitive edge in a highly competitive service market, service organizations desperately search for the key to service excellence. Out of numerous research studies, leadership and service climate are two leading schools of thought for organizational service enhancement. The majority of the literature focused on behavioral leadership as well as studied the impact of service climate at individual level. This study aims at expanding the scope of service quality studies by examining whether leader-member exchange, psychological service climate and organizational service climate will, separately or jointly, affect employees' service performance. Both external and internal service performance of service employees were examined. A total of 319 dyads with matched pairs of leaders and subordinates from 51 service teams from nine service organizations participated in this research study. Data were analyzed with multi-level analysis procedure. Findings indicated that both leader-member exchange and service climate strongly influence service employees' service performance to both external and internal customers. Furthermore, organizational service climate was the most significant predictor of employees' service performance. On the other hand, psychological service climate, when examined in isolation of other independent variables, was found positively related to employees' external service performance but no significant relationship was found for internal service performance. Surprisingly, leader-member exchange was found to be a variable overshadowing psychological service climate. However, such substitutional effect was not found between leader-member exchange and service climate at an organizational level. The interactive effect of service climate on the relationship between leader-member exchange and employees' service performance was not found. The present findings provided a range of "substitutes" for service climate, which opens to further research opportunities. This study also improved our understanding on how organizational service climate and leader-member exchange influence individual employees' service performance. These findings have important implications for advancing the service quality theory and practices, and facilitating the conceptual development of relational leadership, service climate and service quality theories. All the implications to leadership theories and service climate, as well as practical implications for service organizations on launching service initiatives, leaders selection and training, management practices and leader-member working relationship are discussed, and recommendations proposed. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b20661435.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 16.89 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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