Abstract

Customer satisfaction is important in an increasingly competitive and global marketplace. This implies that customer service is a critical factor for many organizations. In service encounter context, customer satisfaction is affected by employees' attitudes and behaviors. Accordingly, service firms have been focusing on selecting high quality of service employees, which resulted the ability to identify and select quality service- or customer- oriented employees to become critical for an organization's success. It was suggested that customer service orientation links to performance and subsequent organizational revenue. Moreover, it was found that service encounter failures were among the major reasons for customers' service switch. Therefore, the selection of customer service oriented employees is a key factor in establishing customer service - a potential source of sustained competitive advantage. However, the measurement of employee service orientation is more confusing than that of definitive answers. The difficulty of measuring service orientation is attributed to the use of broad versus narrow measures of personality. Advocates for the broad perspective prefer using basic personality constructs, such as the Big Five personality traits. On the contrary, the latter prefer a construct-oriented approach of personality research that provides a better measure of job performance because it requires the specification of the relationship of the personality traits with multiple dimensions of job performance. The customer service orientation was defined as "a set of basic individual predispositions and an inclination to provide service, to be courteous and to be helpful in dealing with customers and associates." Similarly, it is a fact that the Big five personality traits are predictors of customer orientation, and employee's self- and supervisor performance. They propose that basic personality traits may be too far removed from focal service behaviors to be able to predict specific service behaviors (customer orientation) and service worker performance. Also, customer orientation is defined as "an employee's tendency or predisposition to meet customer needs in an on-the-job context." This means that people who have job-relevant personality traits such as concern, empathy, and conscientiousness will be more adept at customer service than people who do not possess these traits. However, little attention has been given to the exploration of the service orientation of customer-contact employees who play a key role in creating satisfactory service encounters in the hospitality industry except for Kim, McCahon, & Miller (2003)'s study, especially in family restaurants context. Thus, the purposes of this study are to examine and validate the customer service orientation of customer-contact employees using the instrument developed by Donavan (1999) in Korean family restaurants, because the scale was developed to measure the personality traits related job behaviors. And this study explores the relationships between customer service orientation, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and self service performance using structural equation modeling (SEM). And this study explores the relationships between customer service orientation, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and self service performance using structural equation modeling (SEM). For these purposes the author developed several hypotheses as follows: H1: Employee's service orientation is associated with service performance. H2: Employee's service orientation is positively associated with job satisfaction. H3: Employee's service orientation is positively associated with organizational commitment. H4: Service performance is positively associated with job satisfaction. H5: Service performance is positively associated with organizational commitment. H6: Job satisfaction is negatively associated with organizational commitment. The data were collected from 278 employees in 5 deluxe hotels located in Pusan, Korea. The researcher contacted the manager of the restaurants, and managers consented to administer surveys to their employees. The survey was executed during one month period in the October of 2007. The data were analyzed with structural equation modeling with LISREL 8.7 W. The result of the overall model analysis appeared as follows: $X^2$=122.638 (p = 0.00), df=59, GFI=.936, AGFI=.901, NFI=.948, CFI=.971, RMSEA=.0625. Since the result of the overall model analysis demonstrated a good fit, we could further analyze our data. The findings can be summarized as follows: First, the greater the employee service orientation, the greater the service performance. Second, the greater the employee service orientation, the greater the job satisfaction. Third, the greater the employee service orientation, the greater the organizational commitment. Fourth, the greater the service performance, the greater the job satisfaction. Fifth, the greater the service performance, the greater the organizational commitment. Finally, the greater the job satisfaction, the greater the organizational commitment. Seventh, the greater the customer satisfaction, the greater the customer loyalty.

본 연구는 호텔기업의 종업원 서비스지향성이 종업원의 서비스성과, 직무만족, 그리고 조직몰입에 미치는 영향을 연구하기 위한 것이다. 이를 위하여 부산지역 특1급 호텔에 근무하는 278명의 종업원들로부터 데이터를 수집하였다. 분석결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 호텔기업 종업원의 서비스지향성이 높을수록, 서비스성과, 직무만족, 그리고 조직몰입이 높아지는 것으로 나타났다. 둘째, 서비스성과가 높을수록, 직무만족, 조직몰입이 높아지는 것으로 나타났다. 셋째, 직무만족이 높을수록, 조직몰입이 높아지는 것으로 나타났다. 마지막으로, 본 연구의 시사점과 한계점, 그리고 향후 연구방향이 제시되었다.

Keywords

• Employee's Service Orientation;
• Service Performance;
• Job Satisfaction;
• Organizational Commitment;
• Hotel

• 종업원 서비스지향성;
• 서비스성과;
• 직무만족;
• 조직몰입;
• 호텔기업;