ScholarOne - The Dual-Path Mechanism Underlying the Influence of Customers' Negative Feedback on the Job Crafting of Front-Line Employees

Although prior literature has generally focused on the important role of customers’ negative feedback in shaping employees’ behaviour, these just mentioned the one-sided effect on the cognition or emotion of employees only briefly. However, previous studies has not provided an in-depth discussion of whether customers’ negative feedback has both positive and negative effects. Based on the CAPS, we constructed a dual-path model of the impact of customers’ negative feedback on job crafting via cognitive and affective paths, discussed the moderating effect of error management climate. A two-wave survey design is used to examine these assumptions with data collected from 392 front-line employees in various tourism and hospitality companies. As anticipated, we found that customers’ negative feedback can play a double-edged sword role in each of the two paths, while error management climate moderated this dual-path mechanism. Overall, we conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.