The basic purpose of the research is to understand the significance of internal
marketing in influencing frontline employees'job-related attitudes and service quality.
Since rewards are considered to be an important compqnent of internal marketing, this
research investigates relationships among frontline employee perceptions of rewards
(extrinsic and intrinsic), attitudes (three components of organisational commitment
viz. affective, normative and continuance, and job satisfaction), and service quality, in
banking call centres.
In this context, a conceptual model is presented comprising rewards as the
antecedentsa, ttitudes as the mediating variables, and service quality of the frontline
employees as the outcome variable. The model is empirically tested through a large
sample study that is conducted among 4 call centres of a major retail bank in the UK.
Following certain qualitative in-depth interviews at the exploratory stage, structural
equation modelling (using AMOS) is carried out on 342 useable questionnaires
(response rate of more than 50%), to empirically test the proposed framework for the
study. The measurement and structural models, after validation and purification,
provided satisfactory fit estimates across absolute, incremental and parsimonious
measures.
The results highlight the importance of rewards, as part of internal marketing, in
maintaining employee attitudes, and improving service quality. Intrinsic rewards (like
role clarity, training and skill variety) emerged as the most significant of all, as they
were found to impact on service quality directly. Extrinsic social rewards (like
supervision and team support) were not found to be significant, while the finding
regarding extrinsic organisational rewards-service quality relationship was surprising.
Although assumed important for perfon-nance, some had no direct effect (pay, and
benefits satisfaction, extrinsic exchange), while others (working conditions and
promotional opportunities) exerted a negative direct effect on service quality, although
the indirect effect of most of these rewards was found to be positive. However, these
rewards were considered important for influencing employee attitudes, which in turn
influence service quality. In this context, the importance of employee attitudes like
affective commitment and job satisfaction is emphasisedfor service quality. The
empirical results of the study also reveal that it is the nature of commitment that
matters in commitment-service quality relationship. Affective commitment emerged as
the only attitude variable to bear a significant positive relationship with service
quality. Job satisfaction was not found to impact on service quality directly, although
the indirect effect was found to be positive. Normative commitment impacted on
service quality indirectly, while continuance commitment was not found to be
effective at all.
Besides theoretical and methodological contributions, the thesis also provides strong
managerial implications and directions for future research in applying internal
marketing for improving service quality of frontline employees in call centres.
Keywords: internal marketing, rewards, service quality, commitment, job satisfaction,
UK banks, call centres, frontline employees.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/3465 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Malhotra, Neeru |
| Contributors | Prowse, Peter J., Mukherjee, Avinandan |
| Publisher | University of Bradford, School of Management |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, doctoral, PhD |
| Rights | <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>. |
Page generated in 0.0061 seconds