Management commitment to service quality and organizational outcomes

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the mediating role of effective employee involvement in thelinks between management commitment to service quality, employees’ job satisfaction, and customerperceptions of service performance.Design/methodology/approach – Based on a review of the literature on service management, theauthors identified the role of effective employee involvement in the relationships between managementcommitment to service quality and employees’ job satisfaction and between management commitmentto service quality and customer perceptions of service performance. Using a random sampling method,the authors obtained 143 matched frontline employee-customer dyads in the Macao SpecialAdministrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.Findings – The results of the structural equations analysis show that effective employeeinvolvement fully mediates the positive effects of management commitment to service quality onemployees’ job satisfaction and customer perceptions of service performance.Practical implications – This study confirms that management commitment to service qualityalone does not produce positive organizational outcomes, unless linked with effective employeeinvolvement.Originality/value – The paper contributes to the literature on service management by identifyingthe mediating role of effective employee involvement in the relationships between managementcommitment to service quality and organizational outcomes.Keywords Employee involvement, Job satisfaction, China, Customer services quality, Service industries,Employee attitude