ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOME OF EMOTIONAL SATISFACTION A STUDY OF HO CHI MINH CITY BANKING FRONT-LINE EMPLOYEES

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ 
 

NGUYEN XUAN PHUONG
 
 
 
 

ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOME OF
EMOTIONAL SATISFACTION
A STUDY OF HO CHI MINH CITY BANKING FRONT-LINE
EMPLOYEES

MASTER THESIS

Ho Chi Minh City – 2011


2 
 

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ 
 

NGUYEN XUAN PHUONG
 

 
 

ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOME OF
EMOTIONAL SATISFACTION
A STUDY OF HO CHI MINH CITY BANKING FRONT-LINE
EMPLOYEES
Major
Code

: Business Administration
: 60.34.05

MASTER THESIS

Supervisor
Doctor Nguyen Thi Mai Trang

Ho Chi Minh City – 2011


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UNDERTAKING

I certified that research word titled “Antecedents and outcome of emotional
satisfaction – a study of Ho Chi Minh City banking employees” is my own
work. I have myself studied and conducted the research process by the academic
knowledge obtained from the MBA program and discussed with my supervisor.

By this letter, I would like to undertake that this is my own research project. All
information, data and survey results are true and never announced in any other
research project. Where material has been used from other sources it has been
referred.

Ho Chi Minh City, May 2011

Nguyen Xuan Phuong


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Actually, this thesis is completed due to the contribution of many people. First of
all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Doctor
Nguyen Thi Mai Trang, for all she has done for me. The thesis could not been
finished without her great encouragements and dedicate helps from idea to the
thesis format and content. What I have learnt from her is as much as what I used
to learn before. Again, I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to her.
I would like to express my thanks to ANZ Bank Vietnam Ltd. colleagues who
help me to complete the qualitative research and all front line colleagues who
helped me to complete the questionnaires.
Finally, I sincerely thank my parents, my younger sister and my little daughter to
help me to overcome difficulties during time of attending the course as well as
preparing the thesis.
My heartfelt thanks to you all

Ho Chi Minh City, May 2011

Nguyen Xuan Phuong


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ABSTRACT

The economy has been developing more and more strongly, the competition
among banks is fiercer and fiercer. In order to run a bank’s business operation
successfully, employees are like the blood of the bank. Nowadays, many
researches have done to explore many aspects of employees’ satisfaction.
However, when economy reaches a higher level, people needs also reach a
higher level. Not only physical needs are required, emotional needs are now an
essential part. Although emotional satisfaction was explored by foreign authors
in recent years, research on emotional satisfaction is hard to find. This is the
reason why the purpose of this thesis is to explore antecedents and outcome of
emotional satisfaction.
The research is conducted by organizing a survey and analyzing on 229
completed questionnaire. Base on the results, some discussion on management
implication are introduced to help management team in banks to keep key staff
and attract good front line employees to work for them.


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CONTENTS
CONTENTS ........................................................................................................ 6 
LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................. 9 

LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................... 10 
ABBREVIATION ............................................................................................. 11 
CHAPTER 1.  INTRODUCTION ................................................................... 12 
1.1 

Background ............................................................................................................................ 12 

1.2 

Problem Statement ................................................................................................................. 14 

1.3 

Research Objectives ............................................................................................................... 15 

1.4 

Research Methodology .......................................................................................................... 16 

1.5 

Scope and Limitation ............................................................................................................. 16 

1.6 

Thesis Structure ...................................................................................................................... 17 

CHAPTER 2.  LITERATURE REVIEW AND MODEL ............................... 18 
2.1 

Emotional satisfaction ............................................................................................................ 18 

2.2 

Employee emotional satisfaction and employee-perceived service quality ........................... 20 

2.3 

Antecedents of employee-emotional satisfaction ................................................................... 21 

2.3.1 

Role conflict .................................................................................................................... 22 

2.3.2 

Role ambiguity ............................................................................................................... 24 

2.3.3 

Role overload.................................................................................................................. 26 

2.3.4 

Work‐family conflict ....................................................................................................... 27 

2.3.5 

Task control stressors ..................................................................................................... 29 

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2.3.6 

Perceived‐fairness of performance appraisal ................................................................. 29 

2.4 

The Model .............................................................................................................................. 31 

2.5 

Summary ................................................................................................................................ 34 

CHAPTER 3.  RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ............................................ 35 
3.1 

Research Design ..................................................................................................................... 35 

3.1.1 

Research purpose ........................................................................................................... 35 

3.1.2 

Research approach ......................................................................................................... 35 

3.1.3 

Research process ............................................................................................................ 38 

3.2 

Quantitative Analysis Framework .......................................................................................... 40 

3.2.1 

Measurement scale: ....................................................................................................... 40 

3.2.2 

Target Population and Sampling Method ...................................................................... 45 

3.3 

Data Collection Methods and Analysis .................................................................................. 46 

3.3.1 

Data Collection ............................................................................................................... 46 

3.3.2 

Analysis Method ............................................................................................................. 46 

3.4 

Summary ................................................................................................................................ 48 

CHAPTER 4.  DATA ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH FINDINGS .............. 49 
4.1 

Sample Characteristics ........................................................................................................... 49 

4.2 

Data Analysis ......................................................................................................................... 51 

4.2.1 

Evaluation of the measurement scale by using Cronbach’s Alpha: ............................... 52 

4.2.2 

Evaluation of the measure scale by using exploratory factor analysis (EFA): ................ 53 

4.3 

Testing of hypotheses ............................................................................................................. 57 

4.3.1 

The outcome of emotional satisfaction: ........................................................................ 57 

4.3.2 

The antecedents of emotional satisfaction: ................................................................... 58 

4.3.3 

Other model testing: ...................................................................................................... 59 


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4.4 

Discussion .............................................................................................................................. 60 

4.4.1 

The effect of emotional satisfaction on employee‐perceived service quality ................ 60 

4.4.2 
The effect of employee‐perceived fairness of performance appraisal on emotional 
satisfaction ..................................................................................................................................... 62 
4.4.3 

The effect of role ambiguity on emotional satisfaction ................................................. 62 

4.4.4 

The effect of role conflict on emotional satisfaction ...................................................... 63 

4.5 

Summary ................................................................................................................................ 64 

CHAPTER 5.  CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS .................... 65 

5.1 

Summary of findings and Research contributions ................................................................. 65 

5.2 

Managerial implications ......................................................................................................... 66 

5.3 

Limitations and Future research ............................................................................................. 69 

REFERENCES .................................................................................................. 71 
APPENDIX 1. INTERVIEWED FORM .......................................................... 74 
ENGLISH VERSION ....................................................................................... 74 
VIETNAMESE VERSION ............................................................................... 76 
APPENDIX 2. SCREE PLOT OF ANTECEDENTS OF EMOTIONAL
SATISFACTION .............................................................................................. 78 
APPENDIX 3. EXPLORATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS ............................... 79 
APPENDIX 4. TESTS FOR NORMALITY OF RESIDUALS ....................... 82 
APPENDIX 5. TESTS FOR HETEROSKEDASTICITY ................................ 86 
APPENDIX 6. TESTS FOR COLLINEARITY DIAGNOSTICS ................... 87 


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LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1. Result of agreement in qualitative research ............................................... 32
Table 3.2. Questions, factor and code of variables ..................................................... 38
Table 4.1. Sample Characteristics ............................................................................... 44
Table 4.2. Employee emotional satisfaction among organizations............................. 45
Table 4.3. Cronbach’s alpha ....................................................................................... 47
Table 4.4. Rotated Component Matrix........................................................................ 50
Table 4.5. Linear Regression analysis of outcome of emotional satisfaction............. 53
Table 4.6. Linear Regression analysis of antecedents of emotional satisfaction ........ 54
Table 4.7. Descriptive analysis ................................................................................... 55


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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1. Outcome of emotional satisfaction .......................................................... 27
Figure 2.2. Theoretical Model..................................................................................... 28
Figure 3.1. Research Process ...................................................................................... 34
Figure 4.1. The adjusted model ................................................................................... 52


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ABBREVIATION
Common Wealth

: Common Wealth Bank – HCMC Branch

Military Bank

: Military Joint Stock Bank

Saigonbank

: Saigon Bank for Industry and Trade Joint Stock Bank

Agribank

: Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural development

ANZ

: ANZ Bank Ltd.

ACB

: Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank

HSBC

: The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporate Ltd.

Indovina

: Indovina Joint Venture Bank Ltd.

VIB

: Vietnam International Joint Stock Bank

Sacombank

: Saigon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank

Standard Chartered

: Standard Chartered Bank Ltd.

Vietcombank

: Vietnam Commercial Bank

Prufinance

: Prudential Finance Joint Venture Ltd.

SPSS

: Computer Statistic Package for Social Science

EFA

: Exploratory Factor Analysis

HR

: Human Resources

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CHAPTER 1.
1.1

INTRODUCTION

Background

Recently, the Vietnamese economy reached a higher level of growing. The country has
been one of the most impressive growth stories in the global economy over the last few
decades. As a consequence, Vietnamese achieve higher living standards.
Banking services just like any services industry now must improve their service quality
to keep their business grow and make more profit. It means the bank would not only be
a place to deposit and lend money, but also a place where customers could enjoy
services and place their trust. Moreover, it is easy to find that products of banks do not
vary much between banks and it is not difficult to imitate banking products because
there is no one can prevent the imitation of bank products.
Banks come in all shapes and sizes and often exhibit more similarities than differences.
But one factor common to all is that success is highly dependent on the skills,
knowledge and experience of the employees within them. Ms. Nguyet Nguyen, Human
Resources Consulting Director of Nhan Viet Management Group expressed her view:
“Employees are core product of a business, main resource to improve competition
ability because competitors can imitate business strategy, methods, and products but
cannot copy excellent employees”
Actually, many public publication such as Tuoi Tre newspapers, Doanh Nhan, Cong
Nghiep newspapers impressed important role of employee satisfaction. More and more
services of investigating employee satisfaction for management purposes are offered

by human resources companies in Vietnam. Keeping employees sweet will therefore
go a long way to help any banks to provide a quality service to customers and achieve
its business goals. Logically, a company business’ prospects depend on how it


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organizes its internal activities in such a way that enhance employee satisfaction so that
employees would provide high-quality services and bring more benefit from that.
A survey throughout Vietnam hold by IBG, a consulting services company specializing
in Human Resources and Management, in March 2011 found that 64% of interviewed
employees would like to change their job. While the survey by CareerBuilder found
that for each four employees, there is one person felt his work frustrating, each 4
Vietnamese employees has more than 2.5 ones had negative feeling of their job. This
result is a threat for leaders of instability of human resources which push them to
change to adapt with new challenges. Among main reasons for quitting the job, wage
just occupied 22% while others emotional factors such as justice feeling and
relationship are occupied the remaining.
Vietnam’s banking sector comprises five state-owned commercial banks, thirty-nine
joint stock banks, forty foreign bank branches, five 100% foreign owner banks, five
joint

venture

banks,

and

two

development

and

policy

banks

(source://www.sbv.gov.vn). According to the report in 2007 “The Dawn of Retail
Banking in Vietnam” issue by RNCOS, A market research consulting Services
Company specializing in BioPharma, IT & TELECOM, Retail and Services industries,
there is a growing awareness among domestic banks about the crucial role of
developing retail banking services. Retail banking requires large number of front office
staffs and service quality depends much on them. A big question raised for all Vietnam
banks is that how to make their front office staffs perform their best. They have
attempted quite a lot of management styles and methods. However, it would be a big
failure if banks just focus on cognitive satisfaction of staff but abandon emotion of their
staff. Some managers let their front line employee flexible working time, support them
for their family role and design a flexible policy and procedure. They have thought of
emotional satisfaction for staff. However, some systematic factors should be
documented for management implication and practice.


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Against above findings of threat and opportunities in Banking Services labor market,
the idea for an in-depth study of employees’ emotional satisfaction emerged from
Slatten (2008)’s model of effects and antecedents of emotional satisfaction.

1.2

Problem Statement

As per Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, after all physiology, safety and social needs are
satisfied, higher level needs should be reached to satisfy employees for better services
that they deliver to customers. Otherwise, it is more economic and sometimes more
effective to control people by emotion than by physical things. Employee satisfaction
research has been conducted on a range of related topics with limited advances in the
understanding of emotional satisfaction.
Lack of efficient ways to manage front line employees within organizations has
discouraged their performance as an organizational phenomenon. Although many
organizations have paid a lot for their front line staffs and design a pay system
depending on target sales, it is still not enough to encourage them. Studying cognitive
satisfaction variables has proved so inadequate at explaining the intricacies of front
office employees. Researchers are attempting more effective methods to control front
line office employees’ behavior.
The literature suggests relative agreement regarding effects and antecedents of
emotional satisfaction. Many organizations have deployed surveys to understand front
line employees’ need to encourage their performance. Clearly there is more to an
effective management method system than higher pay and well defined policies and
procedures.
Identifying important variables of effects and antecedents of emotional satisfaction
have proved to be a challenging task to researchers and practitioners. Stressors are
variables that have been indicated to be antecedents of emotional satisfaction.


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Moreover, justice is also considered to be important factor which influence employee
satisfaction.
The research on the relationships between:

role stressors, employee emotional

satisfaction and employees’ perceptions of service quality made by Slatten, 2008 has
developed a model of the relationships that exist between the construct of “emotional
satisfaction” and its antecedents and effects. However, the study used a specific context
and the correlations were relatively low because may be that there could be other
factors that are either antecedents or outcome of emotional satisfaction. Moreover,
Vietnam banks need more management methods on emotional control in replacement
for the old method of controlling people by rules and regulations.
For this reason, this research discovers some factors considered to be antecedents and
outcome of emotional satisfaction for Vietnam banking services.

1.3

Research Objectives

The aim of this research is to undertake an empirical examination of some of the
antecedents and outcome of emotional satisfaction from employees’ perspective.
Particularly, it investigates the relationships between:
• Role stressors (including role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload and
work-family role conflict) and emotional satisfaction;
• Task-control stressor and emotional satisfaction;
• Employee-perceived fairness of appraisal system and emotional satisfaction;
• Employee emotional satisfaction and employees’ perceptions of service
quality.

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1.4

Research Methodology

Data required for this project will be collected from a survey of front line employees
serving retail banking products from many state-owned commercial banks, joint stocks
banks and foreign banks and branches in Vietnam
To get the information, the research methods used in this project are:
-

The research is conducted in two steps which are qualitative and quantitative
research.

-

In qualitative research, set of measures from previous literature are compiled.
Group-discussion technique was used to consider antecedents and outcome of
emotional satisfaction.

-

In quantitative research, two ways of interviewing are carried out to collect data:
o Face to face interviewing: the questionnaire is sent to retail front line
employees in their office. This is the main method to collect data for the
research study.

o Email

and

internet

survey

(available

in

website:

also applied to expand the
size of sample to get completed questionnaire faster and reach employees
of banks in far distance place.
-

Process and analyze data collected by SPSS: Refinement of scales through
Reliability and Validity testing and multiple regression analysis are used to
analyze data collected.

1.5

Scope and Limitation

Because of time and resource limitation, this research focuses only on retail banking
front line employees in HCMC with distributed questionnaires enough representative

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for the sampling. This study took place in a specific context in order to test whether
there is a link between above constructs.

1.6

Thesis Structure

This research includes 5 chapters:
Chapter 1 introduces the research background, the problem statement, research
objectives and model.
Chapter 2 includes the summary of relevant theories. Based on them, the final research
model and hypotheses was developed.
Chapter 3 describes the operational process of this research in order to approach target
respondents and find out the required data.
Chapter 4 presents outcomes of data analysis. Model and hypotheses tests are
conducted.
Finally, chapter 5 summarizes the main findings, implications and limitation as well as
future research suggestion.


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CHAPTER 2.  
LITERATURE REVIEW AND MODEL
2.1

Emotional satisfaction

Many researchers agreed that job satisfaction is a positive attitude with job and nature
of satisfaction is a kind of emotion (Nguyen Nhat Tan, 2009). So, it would be a wrong
reach to job satisfaction if we only focus on wage and benefits. It is clear that doing
research on job satisfaction is finding out more about employees’ emotion.
There are a variety of definitions of emotion and related constructs. The term emotion,
mood and affect have been used inconsistently for a long time. However, there is
considerable agreement that emotional responses are relatively brief, physic events that
are accompanied by physiological process, often expressed physically (for example, in
gesture, posture or facial features) and may result in specific actions to affirm or cope
with the emotion depending on its nature and meaning for the person experiencing the
emotion (Bagozzi, 1999 as cited in Stallen, 2008).
Bagozzi (1999) have defined emotions as “. . . mental states that arise from cognitive
appraisals of events or one’s thoughts”. In this instance, one’s positive emotion is
linked to one’s decision to stay and continue involvement, while one’s negative
emotion is linked to the opposite decision, such as to leave and discontinue
involvement. In addition, positive emotions may lead to positive word-of-mouth
behaviors, while negative emotions may result in complaining behaviors (Liljander and
Strandvik, 1997 as cited in Stallen, 2008).
Plutchik (1980, as cited in Laura and Amanda, 2007) used an evolutionary perspective
to identify eight “primary” emotions consisting of fear, anger, joy, sadness, acceptance,
disgust, expectancy and surprise. According to Plutchik (1980, as cited in Laura &


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Amanda, 2007) these eight emotions have adaptive significance in the struggle for

survival and are identifiable in some form at all levels in the animal kingdom. There is
a perspective identifies emotion as a global feeling construct (Shapiro et al., 2002)
where distinct emotional states can be described by their position on two fundamental
dimensions: arousal and valence. Valence is defined as pleasantness or hedonic value
and arousal as bodily activation (Barrett, 1998, p. 579 as cited in Stallen, 2008)
In order to capture emotional states or processes it is necessary to directly measure
cognitive activities relate to these states or processes. Self report scales of subjective
experiences are the most frequently used procedure in this regard. For example, joyful,
happy, delighted and pleased were hypothesized to indicate a joy index, and ashamed,
embarrassed and humiliated were hypothesized to indicate a shame index. Then, based
on factor analyses of the 29 indices, a three factor solution for emotions was found:
pleasure, arousal and domination which correspond closely to those discovered by
Edell and Burke (1987 as cited in Stallen, 2008). Other researchers (Oliver, 1994;
Westbrook, 1987 as cited in Stallen, 2008), also using factor analysis, have found
emotional items to load on two factors: positive affect and negative affect. Most studies
incorporating multiple instances of both positive and negative emotions find that the
measures load on two factors corresponding to positive and negative emotions
(Bagozzi et al., 1998; Oliver, 1994 as cited in Stallen, 2008).
The role of emotion is gaining attention as a central element in service quality
management (Oliver, 1997 as cited in Stallen, 2008). However, clear models in this
research area are hard to find. There have been some studies of the effects of emotions
on satisfaction with service quality. Recent studies suggest that emotion is a
fundamental attribute in satisfaction and that customer satisfaction should include a
separate emotional component (Cronin, 2000). Wirtz and Bateson (1999) have
similarly contended that a separation of the cognitive and emotional components is


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both necessary and valuable for modeling behavior in service settings. Indeed, Strauss
and Neuhaus (1997, as cited in David, 2008) contend that most satisfaction studies
have focused mainly on the cognitive component of emotion, while seemingly
important affective component has been largely ignored. Further, Liljander and
Strandvik (1997) argue that customer satisfaction includes both affective (emotional)
and cognitive components. Wong (2004) found that negative emotions have a stronger
effect on satisfaction with quality than positive emotions.

2.2
Employee emotional satisfaction and employeeperceived service quality
It is apparent that a services company’s prospects depend on how it organizes its
internal activities to enhance employees’ satisfaction and deliver high quality services
Research has suggested that the emotional feelings of employees do influence the way
they interact with customers (Bitner, 1992 as cited in Yuhanis, 2008). Customer
contact employees play very important roles to ensure the success or failure of the
service exchange (Bowen, 1990; Levitt, 1981). Their personal conduct and attitude
would affect customer’s awareness of the quality of service delivered (Brady and
Cronin, 2001).
Furthermore, it is assumed that competitive advantage and continuing survival can only
be accomplished by establishing an emotional bond with the customers (Jain and Jain,
2005). In relation to service marketing, service employees are regularly required to
express certain emotions as part of their job (Grayson, 1998). Yet, not much research
has been done to investigate the relationships between employee’s emotions and its
impact on the customers. Customer contact employees possess and deliver this
emotional bond by displaying the right emotions to ensure that customers remain
happy and satisfied with the service provided (Yuhanis, 2008). For Schlesinger and


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Heskett (1991), there is a link between employee satisfaction and high quality as
perceived by the customer.
These findings are in accordance with Gronroos’ (1984, as cited in Slatten, 2008)
definition of service quality as a perceived judgment. In this regard, the study has
concentrated on employees’ personal perceptions of the service quality they provide.
Employee-perceived quality is defined as an employee’s personal evaluations of the
service quality that he or she delivers to customers (Slatten, 2008). Therefore, the first
hypothesis of this study is proposed.
H1: There is a positive relation between emotional satisfaction and employeeperceived service quality.
The research would measure different degree of employee satisfaction and employeeperceived service quality to find out the how emotional satisfaction contributes to the
ser-quality that it provide to customers

2.3

Antecedents of employee-emotional satisfaction

There are many factors affect employee emotional satisfaction. All about emotion may
have an influence on emotional satisfaction. However, researches on stressors as below
are proven to have strong influence. Key to effective role behavior is the process of
learning the expectations of others, accepting them, and fulfilling them (Katz and
Kahn, 1978). If a person in a particular role is not able to fulfill the expectations
associated with the position, the person will experience stress (Weatherly and Tansik,
1992). In the literature on role theory (Kahn, 1964 as cited in Slatten, 2008), these role
demands and performance expectations are termed “role stressors”.
Four major role stressors are posited for the purposes of this study:
(1) Role conflict;


22 

 

(2) Role ambiguity;
(3) Role overload;
(4) Work-family conflict; and
Role stress is the most commonly studied work stress at individual level (Beehr, 1995
as cited in Jiunn, 2007) occurs if expected or perceived role differ. It is viewed as
detrimental to individual and organization outcomes, such as increases in perceived job
tension, job dissatisfaction and diminished organizational commitment and
performance (Tang and Chang, 2010).
Nowadays, many organizations have switched their focus to organizational change,
flexibility, and employee empowerment. However, the growing emphasis on
organizational change, flexible work arrangements, employee empowerment, and
autonomous working conditions has led to constantly changing job specifications and
role uncertainty. Moreover, losing stable job boundaries subsequently increases the
potential for role stress (Paul, 2000; Cooper and Dewe, 2004). Still, role stress affects
individual outcomes either positively or negatively.
Among the numerous forms of work stress, work overload, work-family conflict and
role stress (role conflict, role ambiguity and task control stressor) are included. This
study examines role stress, work overload and work-family conflict as antecedents of
emotional satisfaction. As it is widely assumed, role stress significantly contributes to
organizational outcomes. Emotional satisfaction should be influenced by role stress.

2.3.1 Role conflict
Carson (1969) defines role as “a special set of behavioral rules that apply to persons
occupying a given formal position or status in a social system”. Then, Katz and Kahn
(1978) point out that “organizations are open systems of roles” here individuals play


23 

 

their parts with their interdependent behaviors forming a social system. However, these
open systems of roles are vulnerable to members’ role conflict because of the
expectations that the occurrence and/or compliance with two or more roles can create
conflicts (Carson, 1969; Katz & Kahn, 1978).
Role conflict, defined by Kahn (1964), “. . . the simultaneous occurrence of two or
more sets of pressure [such] that compliance with one would make more difficult
compliance with the other”. There are several potential sources of such role conflict
(Kahn et al., 1964), but all share one characteristic in common. In all cases, role
conflict in service delivery is caused by an organization or a customer exerting
pressure to change the behaviour of a frontline service employee. The stronger the
pressures, the greater the conflict created for the service employee (Slatten, 2008).
Cooper (2001) point out: "Role conflict in particular would appear to be very salient in
development of emotional exhaustion" associated with burnout.
Role conflict is not only a micro-level personal matter, but also an interpersonal issue
leading to macro-level organizational consequences. Indeed, if a person cannot resolve
his/her role conflict by conforming to the expectations of the role and/or by changing
his/her personality over time, he/she will develop intentions to leave the organization
(Bedeian & Armenakis, 1981).
To sum up, role conflict is considered incongruity or incompatibility of expectations
associated with the person’s role. It occurs when two roles conflict with each other or
when personal values conflict with work roles. It is proven by researches to affect
internal conflicts, anxiety, tension related with the job, job satisfaction and job
involvement. The second hypothesis is as follows:
H2: There is a negative relation between role conflict and emotional satisfaction.


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According to role theory, role conflict results dissatisfaction on employees. There are a
number of researchers examined the relationship between role stressors and job
satisfaction. Many have proved that role stressors did influence employees’ satisfaction
as mentioned above. However, in some circumstances, this causal relationship did not
seem to exist, for example, in Fuchang (2003)’s research, female managers were
proven to be not affected by role conflict.

2.3.2 Role ambiguity
As per role theory, task conflict occurs when employees perceive conflicting demands
or that carrying out one role expectation makes carrying out another more difficult.
Role ambiguity occurs when employees perceive a lack of clarity in the behavioral
requirements of their job (Kahn, 1964).
Sufficient evidence indicates that both role conflict and role ambiguity lead to
psychological strain (Cooper, 2001) and can affect employees’ job and organizational
outcomes. Such psychological strain is expected to affect employees’ organizational
commitment. Thus, it is expected that those who perceive higher levels of role conflict
and role ambiguity would generally be less committed to the organization.
House and Rizzo (1970) has defined role ambiguity as a “. . . lack of clarity and
predictability of the outcomes of one’s behavior”. In a similar vein, Sell (1981) has
defined role ambiguity as: [. . .] the degree to which information is lacking regarding:
(1) the scope and limits of one’s responsibilities; (2) expectations associated with a role
and the methods and behaviors for fulfilling one’s job responsibilities; (3) which
expectations take priority or stated otherwise, which elements of the role are most
important; and (4) the standards by which one’s performance is appraised.
Fuchang (2003) posited that employees’ interpretation of role stressors might have
differential impacts on the relative strength and type of their commitment.


25 

 

Incompatibility among role expectations and insufficient information needed to
perform their roles would hinder employees’ effectiveness. Thus, high levels of both
role stressors would cause employees to perceive the organization as unsupportive and
unfair, diminishing their affective commitment.
According to Singh and Rhoads (1991), frontline service employees can experience
ambiguity with respect to:
• Superiors;
• The company;
• Ethical issues;
• Customers;
• Co-workers;
• Family; and
• Other managers.
According to Singh et al. (1996), there are four dimensions to role ambiguity:
(1) Process ambiguity: How a person should get things done and how to achieve the
organization’s objectives.
(2) Priority ambiguity: When things should be done.
(3) Expectation ambiguity: What is expected of an employee or what that employee
should be doing, or both.
(4) Behavior ambiguity. How an employee is expected to act in various situations.
The greater the vagueness and unpredictability with regard to these matters, the greater
the ambiguity felt by frontline service employees, Slatten (2008).
In short, role ambiguity is a concept that explains the availability of role-related
information. Certain information is required for adequate performance of a person to
conform the role expectations held by the role senders. The role incumbent must know
what the expectations are: the rights, the activities and the responsibilities of his or her