How Leaders Motivation Transfers to Customer Service Representatives

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Version: Author's accepted manuscript
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Serval ID
serval:BIB_9BE8A547F418
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Title
How Leaders Motivation Transfers to Customer Service Representatives
Journal
Journal of Service Research
Author(s)
Wieseke  J., Kraus  F., Alavi  S., Kessler-Thönes  T.
ISSN
1094-6705
Publication state
Published
Issued date
05/2011
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
14
Number
2
Pages
214-233
Language
english
Abstract
Motivating customer service representatives (CSRs) to their highest performance levels is a major task of service unit managers. However, previous studies focused on the impact of leader behavior on follower motivation, while the influence of leader motivation on follower motivation has not been investigated yet. Thus, the authors develop and test a multilevel framework for the motivation spillover principle, which holds that the three components of Vroom's motivation theory transfer from managers to CSRs. The authors apply this framework to the context of service technology adoption and test it with a matched multilevel sample of 387 service unit managers, 1,018 CSRs, and objective company records. The results support the notion of a motivation spillover from managers to CSRs, which exists incrementally beyond the direct effect of manager's adoption behavior on CSR's adoption. However, not all motivation components transfer unconditionally but are contingent on charismatic leadership and manager-CSR similarity-a finding that implies for researchers that an undifferentiated view of motivation in multilevel settings might not suffice. For organizations, the findings suggest that managers are important multipliers of motivation and thus organizations should direct their motivation efforts toward middle-level managers, as they might turn into serious roadblocks to CSR motivation.
Keywords
motivation, motivation transfer, leader-follower dyad
Web of science
Create date
05/09/2016 13:34
Last modification date
20/08/2019 16:02
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