Organizational customer orientation, employee customer orientation and employee job performance: the moderating role of openness to experience

Organizational customer orientation (OCO) refers to an organization’s continuous and proactive disposition that puts the interests of customers first. Extant studies have noted the positive relationship between OCO and employee job performance. However, little research has explored the mediating and moderating mechanisms in this relationship. This research advances an argument that employee job-related personal value (i.e. employee customer orientation (ECO)) acts as a mediator. Moreover, we argue that this mediation effect is moderated by employee’s personality traits of openness to experience. Using a set of multiwave and multisource data, we tested our hypotheses in the context of service workers (n=393). The results support a series of hypotheses and generate a number of implications for both theory and practice.