The Social Influence of the Manager on Customer Contact Employee Behavior: A Structured Abstract

Abstract

The controls of customer contact employee behavior can be thought of as falling into one of two broad groups, formal and informal controls (Jaworski 1988). Under Jaworski (1988), formal controls are the written, management-initiated mechanisms that influence the probability that employees will behave in the manner desired by the firm and informal controls are the unwritten, usually worker-based mechanisms that influence the individual employee’s behavior. While informal controls, such as self controls, have been shown to positively strongly and positively influence customer contact employee outcomes (e.g. Brown, Mowen, Donavan, and Licata 2002; Pappas and Flaherty 2005; Dean 2007; Babakus, Yavas, and Ashill 2009), they also present greater challenges to managers as they are undocumented and controlled by employees. As a result, it is important to understand which methods are available to managers to influence the “unwritten rules” that guide employee behavior. To that end, this paper examines the social influence of the manager on two informal controls, the customer contact employee’s customer orientation and intrapreneurial orientation.