Managing Role Stress in Service Occupations: Addressing Gaps in Boundary Spanner Research

Even though the negative outcomes of boundary spanners’ role stress are well- known to service theory and practice, insights into how to manage frontline employees to lower experienced role stress are sparse. Moreover, extant research fails to include most up-to-date challenges of new service environments and their effects on frontline employees’ role stress perceptions. This dissertation’s studies focus on three different aspects of managing boundary spanners’ role stress in service occupations affected by the challenges of new service environments: managing (a) enhanced individual role complexity by feedback (Study 1), (b) person-role conflicts by transformational leadership (Study 2), and (c) role ambiguity by problem-focused coping strategies (Study 3). Study 1 introduces the new concept of individual role complexity as mediator between environmental complexity (from customers and the own organization) and role stress of frontline employees in service settings. Moreover, Study 1 details different aspects of individual role complexity and considers feedback from various sources as potential moderators that mitigate the stressing effect of high individual role complexity. The results of this study provide a deeper understanding of current boundary spanner roles, their complexity and potential approaches to handle individual role complexity. The study offers directions for further empirical research on boundary spanners’ role complexity. Moreover, it helps managers to understand today’s service environments and frontline employees’ roles plus it suggests tools to manage imminent performance declines caused by individual role complexity. The purpose of Study 2 is to identify effective leadership behavior that reduces frontline employees’ person-role conflicts, a hitherto rather neglected sub-dimension of role conflicts that strongly differs from externally originated role conflict dimensions which have been examined in existing research. Moreover, Study 2 aims at identifying individual cultural values as important contingency factors for the effects of transformational leadership respectively person-role conflicts on a frontline employee’s job performance. Results reveal that charisma-related transformational leadership styles promote the job performance of frontline employees, even in the face of person-role conflicts, while intellectual stimulation has a negative effect on job performance. In addition, the individual cultural values collectivism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance moderate the effects of transformational leadership on job performance. The findings imply that service firms should train managers in the use of charisma-related leadership styles and highlight the importance of employees’ individual culture when leading frontline employees with distinct leadership styles. Study 3 addresses which frontline employees’ problem-focused coping strategies might effectively reduce perceived role ambiguity. The gathered evidence indicates that only action coping is effective, whereas instrumental support seeking does even enhance perceived role ambiguity. An examination of intrinsic and extrinsic coping resources as drivers of coping reveals that conscientiousness and supervisor support are helpful coping resources. Contrary, neuroticism drives insufficient coping and inhibits the use of effective coping resources. Managers of service firms should provide training to ensure effective supervisor support plus consider the personality traits of potential employees in recruitment procedures to reduce and prevent experienced role ambiguity among frontline employees. Altogether, the three studies contribute to existing service theory and practice by identifying management tools to counter role stress perceptions induced by the challenges of new service environments.