ORGANIZATIONAL PRIDE—HOW IT IS CREATED AND HOW IT SHAPES FRONTLINE EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE

摘要

This is how Ritz-Carlton—unquestionably one of the companies with best reputation for customer service, worldwide— headlines its employee service values. In particular, the company refers to the concept of organizational pride (OP) and highlights it as crucial success factor for their operations. Although, pride is universally known and ever-present, only a few articles in top-ranked marketing journals, dealt with pride on the employees' side, and showed that personal pride enhances favorable in-role and extra-role behaviors in personal selling (Verbeke, Belschak, and Bagozzi 2004) and that pride in advertisements increases customer focus (Celsi and Gilly 2010). OP, which constitutes the kind of pride employees feel for achievements of their organization, has only been touched briefly aside from the main topic (e.g., Gilly and Wolfinbarger 1998). Research on OP in related fields is also relatively scant, but two recent studies point to its high importance, by showing that OP increases commitment to customer service and decreases turnover intentions (Gouthier and Rhein 2011; Helm 2012). However, major shortcomings in the exploration of OP remain: The theoretical basis is insufficiently developed and existing studies look at antecedents and consequences of OP in a relatively isolated way. Furthermore, effects of temporal change in OP on employee behaviors have not been investigated, yet. This lack of academic focus on OP is surprising as various highly-reputed companies besides Ritz-Carlton (e.g., Wal-Mart, 3M, Rolls-Royce, Audi) actively address the topic. This study aims to close these research gaps (1) by developing a broad theoretical OP framework, (2) by establishing a comprehensive research model on antecedents and consequences of OP, and (3) by exploring behavioral effects of over time change in OP.