infonet-economy

This study investigates the situations in which productive organizational
energy (POE) and organizational performance increase through
customer passion, that is, perceived customers' affective commitment and
customers' positive word-of-mouth behavior. We integrate research on
POE with research on customer influences on employees. Based on
emotional contagion processes we develop hypotheses for the energizing
influences of customers at the organizational level. We test the hypotheses
using a dataset containing 495 board members and 8,299 employees
of 152 organizations. The results show that customer passion is positively
related to POE, which is in turn positively related to organizational performance.
Furthermore, the findings indicate that the effect of customer
passion on organizational performance through POE depends on top
management team's (TMT's) customer orientation. By providing first insights into the linkages and contingencies of customer passion, POE,
and organizational performance, this study puts forth a more holistic
understanding of the energizing effect of customers on organizations.