JOURNAL OF SERVICE RESEARCH / May 2002Gittell / RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SERVICE PROVIDERS Relationships Between

nizational scholars have focused on the customer interface as a distinctive feature of service delivery, examining customer-provider dynamics in the context of air travel (Hochschild 1983), fast-food restaurants (Leidner 1991), retail stores (e.g. Rafaeli 1989; Sutton and Rafaeli 1988), nursing homes (Eaton 2000), and hospitals (e.g., Wrzesniewski and Dutton 2001). This literature describes vividly the interpersonal dynamics between individual providers and individual customers that shape the service delivery experience and the outcomes experienced by customers. Other scholars have argued that organizations can go beyond isolated, episodic interactions to develop relation-ships with their customers, with the result of improving customer satisfaction and customer loyalty (Bitner 1995; Cross and Smith 1995; Peppers and Rogers 1993; Siehl, Bowen, and Pearson 1992). Gutek and her colleagues ar-gue, uniquely, that only individual providers can establish real relationshipswith customers, due to the importance of interpersonal dynamics in building a relationship (Gutek 1995, 1999; Gutek et al. 1999). Still, they find that organi-zations can establish pseudorelationships with customers that offer many of the same benefits. Our understanding of customer-provider relationships more sophisticated. ntly developedmodels in which satisfaction is s of exchange (Bolton arton Conference onUn-he Academy of Manage-imbush for his assistanceBecause of the inseparability of production and con-sumption inmany service settings, service delivery is typi-cally characterized by interactions between customers and providers (Schneider and Bowen 1985). As a result, orga-has continued to evolve and grow Bolton and her colleagues have rece of customer-provider relationships achieved through perceived fairne