Organisational climate, service climate and customer satisfaction: An investigation of their relationships in franchised hospitality enterprises

Purpose: This paper offers a comparison of the relative efficacies of a generalised or overall organisational climate measure and a domain specific measure, service climate, as predictors of customer satisfaction, in two international hospitality sector franchise systems. Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative research method was employed. Data were collected from 122 employees by way of a mail survey and from 220 customers by way of a brief questionnaire, handed to customers during consumption of the service. Data were analysed at the individual employee and franchise (organisational) levels using multiple regression and correlation analyses. Findings: Generalised climate at both levels of analysis was found to explain more of the variance in customer satisfaction than did service climate suggesting that satisfaction is a product of a wider spectrum of organisational factors than simply service itself. Nevertheless, service climate accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in customer satisfaction. Implications: The findings suggest that customer satisfaction and hence business viability may well be enhanced by management attention to the broader workplace experience of all employees rather than simply to customer service initiatives alone. Originality/value: The originality and value of the paper lies in its comparison of organisational climate and service climate as predictors of customer satisfaction