Does affective commitment really matter? Linking employee commitment with service quality

In today's service-oriented economy, employees' attitudes can have significant impact on the quality of customer service and can influence customers' perceptions of an organization's service quality. The purpose of this study was to provide empirical evidence for the positive relationship between employee attitudes and customers' perceptions of service quality at the station level. Specifically, data collected in the airline industry was used to test the relationship between employees' affective commitment and customers' perceptions of service quality. The level of analysis in this research was a station defined as an individual airport. It was suggested that station affective commitment would be positively correlated with station service quality. Employee affective commitment scores collected in the airline industry were correlated with customer perceptions of service quality using individual airports as a level of analysis. The data was collected at the individual level and then aggregated to the station level. Employee affective commitment was measured using items from the employee opinion survey. Station service quality was measured using customer satisfaction survey, number of customer complaints per station, number of customer compliments per station, and dollars spent on compensating dissatisfied customers per station. Contrary to expectations, results indicated that employees' affective commitment is negatively correlated with customers' perceptions of service quality at a station as measured by the customer satisfaction survey. Furthermore, no relationship was found between employee affective commitment and number of customer complaints, compliments, and dollars spent on compensating dissatisfied customers. Possible explanations for the negative correlation of affective commitment to service quality include the complexity of the airline industry, the lack of alignment among organizational goals and rewards, customers' attitudes towards airlines, and the lack of relational coordination. Overall, these results suggest that organizations should focus on evaluating the impact of affective commitment because of its potential negative impact on customers' perception of service quality. Limitations, implications, and suggestions for future research are discussed.