received from participants in the pilot study). The important finding from Model 7
is that researchers wishing to assess service quality from the employee’s
perspective should not approach the task in the manner described in this
research!
Attempting to measure service quality in this way was intended to circumvent the
requirement to collect customer data and design a method that ensured that a
causal relationship could be established in the analysis (i.e., the customers who
respond have experienced service from subordinates of the same leader whose
behaviour is being measured). Successfully executing such a method for
assessing service quality is hereby devolved to future researchers and ‘chalked
up’ as ‘an area for future research’. One potential avenue for future researchers
to follow has been identified subsequent to the completion of the data collection
and analysis in this research. Babakus et al. (2003) drew upon the earlier work
of Ruyter and Wetzels (2000) to create a used a construct measuring service
recovery performance. Babakus et al.’s construct is operationalised with five
indicator variables that measure employees’ perceptions and experiences related
to service failure and their research found that (i) management commitment to
service quality positively influenced employees’ affective organisational
commitment (AOC) and job satisfaction (JS) and (ii) that employees’ AOC and JS
in turn positively influenced service recovery performance.
8.2.1 Additional analyses
Following the development of the multi-construct structural equation models, two
smaller models were specified and estimated to measure the contributions of (i)
motivational leadership and empowerment to mission clarity and (ii) employees’
job satisfaction to job performance.
Mission clarity
Section 7.16 describes Model 8 where it was found that both motivational
leadership ( = 0.194) and employee empowerment ( = 0.482) had significant
positive effects on employees’ mission clarity (MC). The motivational leadership
→ mission clarity finding can be compared with Hinkin and Tracey ( 1994 ) who