Supportiveness of Internal Environment for Complaint Handling

What it measures

Measures the extent to which an organisation's human resource management (HRM) practices and corporate culture create a supportive internal environment for effective complaint handling, operationalising the organic approach to complaint management. The scale captures two facets: (1) personnel-related HRM activities, including training, goal-setting, performance evaluation, recognition, and leadership behaviour by managers; and (2) the organisational culture's general customer orientation, including attitudes toward complaints and organisational failures. Five items are reverse-coded to capture dysfunctional cultural attitudes such as viewing complaints as personal criticism or treating complainants as trouble makers. Administered to the manager with primary responsibility for complaint management. Originally 20 items; one item (financial rewards for complaint staff) was eliminated during purification.

Response format

7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree)

Scale items

• In our company/business unit, the training of employees who are responsible for complaint management aims at assuring their sensitivity to the importance of customer complaints.
• In our company/business unit, employees who are responsible for complaint management are trained how to deal with complaining customers.
• In our company/business unit, managers regularly communicate complaint management goals, customer satisfaction goals, and customer retention goals to employees who are responsible for complaint management.
• In our company/business unit, managers include complaint management goals, customer satisfaction goals, and customer retention goals into the target definition for employees who are responsible for complaint management.
• In our company/business unit, the performance evaluation of employees who are responsible for complaint management includes the achievement of complaint management goals, customer satisfaction goals, and customer retention goals.
• In our company/business unit, employees are recognized for outstanding achievements regarding complaint management.
• In our company/business unit, managers set a good example in terms of high customer orientation in general and effective complaint management in particular.
• In our company/business unit, managers regularly communicate the benefits of an effective complaint management to employees who are responsible for complaint management.
• In our company/business unit, managers are, with regard to customer complaints, primarily interested in preventing failures from reoccurring rather than blaming employees for problems.
• In our company/business unit, all employees display a high level of customer orientation.
• In our company/business unit, the thinking and actions center around the customer.
• In our company/business unit, customer-oriented values and norms are deep-seated.
• In our company/business unit, employees have a rather negative attitude toward customer complaints. (R)
• In our company/business unit, employees tend to regard customer complaints as personal criticism rather than as an opportunity to restore customer satisfaction. (R)
• In our company/business unit, managers tend to regard customer complaints as a result of own wrong decisions rather than as an opportunity to prevent failures from reoccurring. (R)
• In our company/business unit, complaining customers are sometimes seen as trouble makers or petitioners. (R)
• In our company/business unit, employees are not fully aware of the benefits of an effective complaint management. (R)
• In our company/business unit, managers and employees openly talk about organizational problems and failures.
• In our company/business unit, employees try to solve organizational problems and to prevent failures from reoccurring.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Composite reliability = .93; AVE = .42 (below the recommended .50 threshold, reflecting the construct's breadth across HRM and culture facets; reliability still strong). In the structural model, the internal environment positively predicts procedural justice (γ = .36, p < .01), interactional justice (γ = .57, p < .01), and distributive justice (γ = .12, p < .05). The organic approach explains approximately 29% of variance in aggregate perceived justice (vs. 38% for the mechanistic approach), supporting the primacy of the mechanistic approach. The internal environment also negatively moderates the effects of behavioural guidelines on interactional justice (p < .01) and outcome guidelines on distributive justice (p < .10), indicating a compensatory relationship between the two approaches.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Homburg, C., & Fürst, A. (2005). How organizational complaint handling drives customer loyalty: An analysis of the mechanistic and the organic approach. Journal of Marketing, 69(3), 95–114.

Keywords