Customer-Initiated Support and Employees’ Proactive Customer Service Performance: A Multilevel Examination of Proactive Motivation as the Mediator

Drawing on the proactive motivation model and theories of motivation, the current study examined customer-initiated support as an antecedent of employees’ proactive customer service performance (PCSP) and investigated the mediating role of proactive motivations and the moderating role of serving culture. We conducted two multilevel studies to test the proposed hypotheses. In study 1, we collected diary data from 158 nurses across 10 working days, and results showed that the relationship between nurses’ daily experience of customer-initiated support and their PCSP was mediated by self-efficacy, work meaning, and positive affect. In study 2, we collected multilevel multi-source data from 373 nurses nested within 80 units and found that nurses’ experience of customer-initiated support was positively related to their supervisor-rated PCSP via role-breadth self-efficacy and work meaning, but not through positive affect. Further, team-level serving culture strengthened the positive relationship between customer-initiated support and role-breadth self-efficacy. These findings shed light on understanding the effect of customer-initiated support as an external factor on prompting service employees’ proactive behaviors, potential motivational mediators to explain the underlying mechanisms, and potential boundary conditions inside of service organizations to strengthen the positive effects of customer-initiated support.     

Specificity of relations between adolescents’ cognitive emotion regulation strategies and symptoms of depression and anxiety

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to examine the extent to which cognitive emotion regulation strategies were “common or transdiagnostic correlates” of symptoms of depression and anxiety and/or “specific correlates” distinguishing one problem category from the other. The sample comprised 582 13- to 16-year-old secondary school students. Symptoms of depression and anxiety were measured by the SCL-90, and cognitive emotion regulation strategies were measured by the CERQ, in a cross-sectional design. Multivariate regression analyses were performed. Before controlling for comorbidity, the same cognitive emotion regulation strategies that were related to symptoms of depression were also related to symptoms of anxiety. However, after controlling for comorbid anxiety symptoms, rumination, self-blame (only girls), positive reappraisal, and positive refocusing (the latter two inversely) were uniquely (and significantly) associated with depression symptoms; and after controlling for comorbid depression symptoms, catastrophising and other-blame were uniquely related to anxiety symptoms. The results supported the cognitive content-specificity model, in which anxiety is supposed to be uniquely characterised by thoughts concerning the overestimation of threats and harm, and depression is supposed to be uniquely characterised by negative evaluations of self, and of past and future events.     

Are Decisions Made by Group Representatives More Risk Averse? The Effect of Sense of Responsibility

We tested the hypothesis that a sense of responsibility drives group representatives' decisions to be more risk averse compared with decisions made by individuals. The hypothesis was supported when the monetary considerations (i.e., payoff inequality and the magnitude effect) were controlled for in the potential gain domain as well as in the potential loss domain. Evidence showed that this is because the group representatives were concerned about how they would view themselves (e.g., guilt and self‐blame) and also how they would be viewed by others (i.e., to avoid being blamed and looked down upon by others). This study provided new insights into understanding group representatives' decision making under risk. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Burger or yogurt? Indulgent consumption in impression management contexts

We conducted three studies to investigate indulgent choice in settings with and without impression management by public–private manipulation with evaluation. Study 1 showed that the participants were less indulgent under public scrutiny due to the employment of impression management. Study 2 focused on the impression management context to test the moderate effect of self‐consciousness in two impression managed contexts. Study 3 focused on context without impression management to test the moderate effects of self‐awareness on choices. We found that depending on differences in primed personality, individuals tended to make choices other than those they favoured privately when anticipating that others might form impressions of them based on the decisions made. The findings of all three studies support our basic prediction that people are less indulgent under impression management and suggest that people tend to manage their impression by eating healthier (less indulgently) in public.