Employee and Customer Cynicism: Strategic Engineering of Service Encounters for Effectiveness in Environments of High Cynicism

Abstract: The purpose of this research is to develop a theoretical model of employee cynicism and customer cynicism in the context of service environments and to propose suggestions on how to engineer the service encounter for effectiveness even in environments of high cynicism levels. Cynicism has reached high levels in consumers (Sheth & Sisodia, 2005) and high levels in many organizations and it may have important consequences (Andersson & Bateman, 1997; Bedeian, 2007; Patterson & Baron, 2010). The antecedents of employee and customer cynicism are proposed to be both distrust and also a certain level of ignorance about the context of the specific service encounter. Distrust is difficult to make movements (decrease) while contextual ignorance is relatively easier to make movements on (decrease). The resulting model suggests both direct and indirect effects on effectiveness in a given service encounter. Implications are provided for the design of service encounters in environments characterized as highly cynical.

Keywords: Cynicism, Employee Cynicism, Customer Cynicism, Quality Service, Service Design

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100272

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