Internal communication and prosocial service behaviors of front-line employees:  investigating mediating mechanisms

Neeru Malhotra; Anna-Lena Ackfeldt

doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.03.038

Internal communication and prosocial service behaviors of front-line employees: investigating mediating mechanisms

Neeru Malhotra, Anna-Lena Ackfeldt

Marketing & Strategy

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This paper contributes to the prosocial service behavior (PSB) literature by developing and testing a conceptual framework to investigate the mediating mechanisms underlying the relationships between internal communication
and PSBs. Data collected from front-line employees (FLEs) in a UK based service organization was used to test our conceptual framework. Our findings demonstrate that FLE perceptions of internal communication practices
influence their role stress and organizational commitment, which, in turn, influence their PSBs. The results highlight the significance of studying role stress and organizational commitment as mediators in the relationship
between internal communication and PSBs. The limitations of the study are then sketched, and suggestions for future research are also provided.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	4132-4139
Journal	Journal of Business Research
Volume	69
Issue number	10
Early online date	14 Apr 2016
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.03.038
Publication status	Published - 1 Oct 2016

Bibliographical note

Keywords

internal communication
prosocial service behaviors
organizational commitment
role stress
FLEs
frontline employees

Access to Document

10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.03.038

Internal communication and prosocial service behaviors of front-line employees
© 2016, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Accepted author manuscript, 325 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Cite this

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title = "Internal communication and prosocial service behaviors of front-line employees: investigating mediating mechanisms",

abstract = "This paper contributes to the prosocial service behavior (PSB) literature by developing and testing a conceptual framework to investigate the mediating mechanisms underlying the relationships between internal communicationand PSBs. Data collected from front-line employees (FLEs) in a UK based service organization was used to test our conceptual framework. Our findings demonstrate that FLE perceptions of internal communication practicesinfluence their role stress and organizational commitment, which, in turn, influence their PSBs. The results highlight the significance of studying role stress and organizational commitment as mediators in the relationshipbetween internal communication and PSBs. The limitations of the study are then sketched, and suggestions for future research are also provided.",

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