A LONGITUDINAL EXAMINATION OF CONCOMITANT CHANGES IN TEAM LEADERSHIP AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

• Published in: Personnel psychology Vol. 61; no. 3; pp. 547 - 577
• Main Authors: WALKER, ALAN G., SMITHER, JAMES W., WALDMAN, DAVID A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Malden, USA Blackwell Publishing Inc 01.09.2008; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: Banking; Banking industry; Behavior; Behavior Change; Behavior Modification; Brand loyalty; Competitive advantage; Customer satisfaction; Customer services; Employee management relations; Error of Measurement; Feedback; Intention; Leadership; Leadership Effectiveness; Managers; Organizational Effectiveness; Organizational Objectives; Performance evaluation; Psychometrics; Ratings & rankings; Regional banks; Research Needs; Researchers; Retail banking; Studies; Validity
• ISSN: 0031-5826; 1744-6570
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1744-6570.2008.00122.x

For each of three 1‐year time periods, we examined the relationship between changes in the team leadership of branch managers (as measured by employee ratings) and concomitant changes in customer satisfaction for branches of a regional bank. Specifically, for the time period 2001–2002, we examined concomitant changes in team leadership and customer service satisfaction with 68 branch managers; between 2002–2003 and 2003–2004 we examined these relationships for 46 and 40 of the remaining 68 branch managers, respectively. We expected that improvements (declines) in team leadership ratings would be accompanied by concomitant changes (i.e., improvement or decline) in customer satisfaction ratings. We found that, in 2 of the 3 time periods we examined, improvements (declines) in team leadership were related to improvements (declines) in customer satisfaction. We interpret these findings using the service climate literature.