An Empirical Study On The Relationship Between Customer Misbehavior And Employee Organizational Deviant Behavior From The Perspective Of Morality

With the development of China’s service economy,in order to obtain sustainable competitive advantages,service enterprises believe in the “Customer first” and required employees to provide high-quality services and try their best to please customers.However,such customers privilege undoubtedly increase the workload of service employees,which makes them more vulnerable to suffer customer misbehavior.Due to the universality of customer misbehavior,more and more scholars begin to pay attention to this phenomenon and discuss the negative impact of customer misbehavior on employee.Although scholars have carried out a series of studies,there are still some limitations.First of all,existing researches have discussed the relationship between customer misbehavior and employee service sabotage,while the direct damage to the organization of customer misbehavior is ignored.Although scholars have paid attention to the relationship between customer misbehavior and organizational deviant behavior,some inconsistent conclusions have emerged,which cannot figure out the impact of customer misbehavior on employee organizational deviant behavior,nor can the causal relationship between the two be verified.Secondly,existing studies have explored the relationship between customer misbehavior and organizational deviant behavior from the perspectives of resources and emotion,which cannot explain why employees will conduct organizational deviant behavior rather than service sabotage behavior after experiencing customer misbehavior.Finally,both customer misbehavior and organizational deviance can be regarded as unethical behavior in the workplace,but few studies have explored the boundary conditions of customer misconduct from an ethical perspective.In view of the above research problems,this paper will further summarize the effects of customer misbehavior on employees’ behavior,and explore the mechanism of the relationship between customer misbehavior and employee organizational deviant behavior,and reveal the boundary conditions.A meta-analysis of customer misbehavior and employee behavioral outcomes is conducted in Study 1.The results showed that customer misbehavior had the greatest impact on employee service sabotage and organizational deviant behavior.It also examines the effects of negative emotions and emotional exhaustion,and explores the moderating effects of national culture and other factors.Study 2 discusses the relationship between customer misbehavior and employee organizational deviant behavior.This paper examines the effect of customer misbehavior on employee organizational deviant behavior through exclusive interpretation and dynamic analysis,verifies the moderation of service leadership,and proves the causal relationship between customer misbehavior and employee organizational deviant behavior.Based on the theory of moral disengagement,Study 3 shows that customer misbehavior can lead to service sabotage by demeaning customers and organizational deviation behavior by reconstructing organizational norms,and the uniqueness and exclusivity of the two approaches are tested.Study 4 discusses the boundary conditions of customer misbehavior from the perspective of morality.The moderating effects of moral relativism and moral leadership on the relationship between customer misbehavior and employees’ reconstruction of organizational norms are verified by experimental method,and the indirect effects of moral relativism and moral leadership on customer misbehavior and organizational deviant behavior through employees’ reconstruction of organizational norms are tested by moderated mediation model.Through four groups of studies,this paper verifies the causal relationship between customer misbehavior and employee organizational deviant behavior,which enriches the research on the effects and consequences of customer misbehavior,and expands the explanatory role of moral disengagement mechanism in customer misbehavior.Finally,this paper provides help for service organizations to view customer misbehavior and its impact objectively,and provides some management implications.