A Social Informational Processing Lens on Multi-Foci Mistreatment: Roles of Customer Orientation and Power Distance

Abstract

Drawing on social information processing theory, this set of studies aims to examine hospitality frontline employees’ sabotage toward customers following workplace mistreatment, namely customer incivility and abusive supervision. In addition, employees’ power distance belief and customer orientation are identified as individual contingency factors that alter employees’ sabotage behavior following mistreatment. A multi-method approach with cross-sectional and experimental designs was adopted. In Study 1, 347 Chinese hospitality frontline employees provided survey data in a cross-sectional design. In Study 2, 191 U.S. hospitality frontline employees were recruited for a between-subjects scenario-based experiment. The findings reveal the complementary roles of customers and supervisors as informational sources that jointly determine employees’ sabotage behaviors. In addition, in line with social information processing theory, employees’ personal characteristics regarding the perception of informational sources (power distance belief and customer orientation) were found to significantly alter employees’ sabotage behavior derived from multi-foci workplace mistreatment.