PERCEIVED ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT AND EMPLOYEES’ COMMITMENT TO CUSTOMER SERVICE: AGREEABLENESS AS A MODERATOR

Abstract

Person’s psychological attachment towards any course of action which refers to ‘commitment’ has become a widely used term in the field of Organizational Behavior. The basic commitment has been extended to different targets such as commitment to the organization and commitment to change. Notwithstanding employees’ commitment to customer service has become one of the important considerations in achieving organizational outcomes and remained an unsolved issue in practice, it received limited scholarly attention. Consequently, we investigated the impacts of perceived organizational support (POS) and agreeableness personality trait on the commitment to customer service. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed among the sales employees and their respective supervisors those who employed in four textile shops in Ratnapura municipal council area. We received 152 pairs of matched responses consisting of a questionnaire rated by the employees on POS and agreeableness, a rating of supervisor on employee’s commitment to customer service. Data were analyzed by using Hayes macro Process in SPSS. Results revealed that POS has a positive and significant impact on the commitment to customer service. Also, agreeableness moderated the impact of POS and the commitment to customer service. Our study extended commitment to a new target of commitment to customer service. It also reveals the importance of caring and full-filling socio-emotional needs of employees, while ensuring the employees are having agreeableness trait during the stages of recruitment and selection.