Antecedents and outcomes of frontline employees' burnout and service recovery performance in a New Zealand state-owned enterprise setting

Abstract

Frontline Employees' (FLEs') service recovery performance is crucial to customer retention in a competitive business environment. Understanding the relationships among job demands and job resources ('work characteristics'), emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation ('burnout') and FLEs' service recovery performance, organisational commitment and job satisfaction ('behavioural' and 'affective job outcomes') is important to managers in New Zealand State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), whose market-orientated model is intended to deliver quality services efficiently. Building on the literature, the study constructed a model to test thirteen hypotheses against a sample of FLEs in an SOE in New Zealand, using Partial Least Squares analysis. Significant and nonsignificant relationships among work characteristics, burnout dimensions, service recovery performance, organisational commitment and job satisfaction are identified. Burnout, while present, has little effect on service recovery performance. Eustress is observed between job demands and service recovery performance, while job resources have no significant direct effects on depersonalisation or service recovery performance. The study makes an important theoretical contribution to understanding the relationships among the study's constructs, in particular the relationship between different burnout dimensions and FLEs' service recovery performance, in the novel context of an SOE setting. Managerial implications include evidence that FLEs' burnout can be managed but not eliminated, and questions concerning the cost-effectiveness of job resources. Future research could include broadening the range of job resources and examining their effectiveness, investigating the impact of individual job stressors and job resources, studies into FLEs' attitudes towards service recovery, and further exploration of FLE performance in an SOE setting.