کاهش استرس شغلی و تاثیر آن بر بهبود کار کارکنان خدمات: تأثیر پاداش Alleviating job stress to improve service employee work affect: the influence of rewarding

1 Introduction Improving the occupational health and well-being of customer contact employees (CCEs) to provide customers with better service is becoming an increasingly important priority for many firms. The demanding boundary spanning role of CCEs has long been recognized in the marketing literature (e.g., Kim et al. 2012; Singh 1998, 2000). CCEs are ‘‘at the heart of service provision’’ (Surprenant and Solomon 1987) because they greatly influence customers’ perceptions of service quality through the key components of relatedness, assurance, tangibles, empathy, and reliability (An and Noh 2009; Parasuraman et al. 1985). Customers’ service experiences are therefore largely contingent upon CCEs’ job-related attitudes and behaviors (Kim et al. 2012; Jeon 2016; Bitner et al. 1994). Accordingly, researchers continue to highlight the need to identify effective managerial interventions that promote CCE occupational health and well-being (Gilbert et al. 2011; Rayburn 2014; Smith et al. 2012) and improve customer service experiences (Ostrom et al. 2010; Schneider and Bowen 2010). The current research draws on equity theory to assess the relative influence of alternative types of rewarding on CCE job stress and work affect. Job stress—the sense of time pressure, anxiety, and worry associated with jobrelated activities that can lead to strain, hostility, and depression (Motowidlo et al. 1986)—has a particularly detrimental influence on CCEs’ ability to provide highquality service that satisfies customers (Teng and Liu 2014; Kim et al. 2012, Babakus et al. 2009; Varca 1999). Research studies indicate that insufficient resource allocation (Gillespie et al. 2001) and predominantly cost-driven approaches to service provision (Marinova et al. 2008) increase employee job stress. Such work-related stress has a pervasive influence on CCE occupational health and performance (Fisk and Neville 2011). In contrast, effective work design (Rayburn 2014), human resource management (Schneider and Bowen 1993), and developmental interventions (Ellinger et al. 2008; Elmadag˘ et al. 2008) all favorably influence service employee work affect. Researchers therefore contend that job stress must be effectively mitigated to improve service worker attitudes that influence the quality of service provision (Singh 2000; Taris 2006). However, most examinations of CCE job stress are focused on the causes and outcomes of job stress (e.g., Teng and Liu 2014; Johnson and Sohi 2014; Varca 1999), rather than on identifying remedies.