Contact employees: Relationships among workplace fairness, job satisfaction and prosocial service behaviors

Contact employees deliver the promises of the firm, create an image for the firm and sell the firm's services. Leading firms and scholars propose a possible relationship between the fair treatment of these employees and excellence in service delivery. This important proposition, however, lacks much more than anecdotal evidence. An empirical investigation is presented which offers support for positive relationships between contact employee fairness perceptions and their prosocial service behaviors (customer service behaviors and cooperation with fellow employees) and job satisfaction. Fairness of job supervision, pay and promotion rules and supervisor administration of these rules emerge as the key predictors of contact employee prosocial service behaviors and job satisfaction. The paper concludes with a discussion of research and managerial implications.