Michael D. Hartline & O. C. Ferrell The Management of Customer-Contact Service Employees: An Empirical Investigation The authors develop and test a model of service employee management that examines constructs simultaneously across three interfaces of the service delivery process: manager-employee, employee-role, and employee-cus- tomer. The authors examine the attitudinal and behavioral responses of customer-contact employees that can influ- ence customers' perceptions of service quality, the relationships among these responses, and three formal man- agerial control mechanisms (empowerment, behavior-based employee evaluation, and management commitment to service quality). The findings indicate that managers who are committed to service quality are more likely to empower their employees and use behavior-based evaluation. However, the use of empowerment has both posi- tive and negative consequences in the management of contact employees. Some of the negative consequences are mitigated by the positive effects of behavior-based employee evaluation. To increase customers' perceptions of service quality, managers must increase employees' self-efficacy and job satisfaction, and reduce employees' role conflict and ambiguity. Implications for the management of customer-contact service employees and directions for further research are discussed. M any service firms are subject to failures in service delivery because they must depend on customer- contact employees to deliver service to their cus- tomers. Because the delivery of service occurs during the interaction between contact employees and customers (the service encounter), the attitudes and behaviors of contact employees can influence customers' perceptions of the ser- vice (Bowen and Schneider 1985). Because of the impor- tance of the service encounter, service firms must find ways to effectively manage their customer-contact employees to help ensure that their attitudes and behaviors are conducive to the delivery of quality service. The management of customer-contact employees has been extensively discussed in the services marketing litera- ture. However, previous research examines the employee management process from one of three perspectives: the manager-employee interface, the employee-role interface, and the employee-customer interface. The manager- Michael D. Hartline is Assistant Professor, Department of Marketing, Col- lege of Business Administration, Louisiana State University. O. C. Ferrell is Visiting Distinguished Professor of Marketing, University of Tampa, and Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Business Ethics, University of Memphis. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Marketing Science Institute, aswell asthe guidance of Emin Babakus, Pat Schul, and Tom Ingram in planning and conducting this study. They also thank Richard Netemeyer, Dan Sherrell, the editor, and three anonymous JMreviewers for their valuable suggestions in preparing and revising this article. 52/ Journal of Marketing, October 1996 employee interface deals with human resource management issues and the activities involved in managing the responses of customer-contact employees. Previous research in this area has examined issues such as management commitment to service quality (cf. Ahmed and Parasurarnan 1994), empowerment (cf. Bowen and Lawler, 1992), employee socialization (cf. Hartline and Ferrell 1993), traditional managerial functions (cf. Bowen and Schneider 1985), employee reward policies (cf. Bush et al. 1990), and internal marketing (cf. George 1990). The employee-role interface deals with the relationships among contact employee behav- iors, responses, and attitudes. Research in this area has investigated the effects of role conflict and role ambiguity (cf. Singh 1993); the relationships among job satisfaction, self-efficacy, adaptability, and employee effort (cf. Glisson and Durick 1988; Spiro and Weitz 1990); and the use of cog- nitive scripts in the delivery of service (cf. Humphrey and Ashforth 1994). The employee-customer interface deals with employee-customer interaction during the service encounter. Previous research in this area has examined the relationship between customer perceptions of the service encounter and contact employees' attitudinal and behavioral responses (cf. Bitner 1990; Bitner, Booms, and Mohr 1994). Specific employee responses that have been investigated include role stress (cf. Singh 1993); ability, competence, and adaptability (cf. Bitner, Booms, and Tetreault 1990); and job satisfaction (cf. Bowen and Schneider 1985). The findings from previous research lead to two major conclusions: (1) managers can influence customer-contact employees' responses so as to enhance service quality and Journal of Marketing Vol. 60 (October 1996), 52-70