Gender and Sexuality in Frontline Service Work: Understanding Service Actors’ Approaches and Responses to Workplace Diversity

Abstract

This thesis contributes to the rejuvenation of literature on the role of frontline employee (FLE) gender in business-to-consumer (B2C) service interactions and to the emerging field of FLE sexuality in these interactions. Three related papers provide insight into service actors’ interpretations of and responses to gender and sexuality diversity in frontline service work, especially in gendered service roles. The first paper in the thesis examines customers’ responses to gendered service failure, including empathy, forgiveness and post-purchase intentions. Applying a quantitative approach across two experiments, the paper compares customer responses to male and female FLEs failing in masculine and feminine service roles. Findings suggest that customers empathise more with female FLEs than male FLEs, with these increased empathy responses improving customer forgiveness processes towards female FLEs following service failure. The results also highlight the relationship between decisional/emotional forgiveness and post-purchase outcomes, with decisional forgiveness being a better predictor of repurchase intention following a service failure and emotional forgiveness (or lack thereof) being a better predictor of intention to spread negative word-of-mouth. The second paper extends the first by addressing the role that FLE sexuality and different presentations of sexuality play in determining customer responses to service delivery in gendered service roles. A pair of experiments examine customer responses to non-heterosexual male FLEs (compared to heterosexual male FLEs) and to feminine-presenting non-heterosexual male FLEs (compared to masculine-presenting non-heterosexual male FLEs) in both masculine and feminine service roles. Results suggest that female customers demonstrate more favourable post-purchase responses to non-heterosexual FLEs, with male customers demonstrating no difference in responses to non-heterosexual or heterosexual FLEs. However, male customers respond more poorly to feminine-presenting non-heterosexual FLEs than masculine-presenting non-heterosexual FLEs. Extending on the findings of Paper 2 that an FLE’s non-heterosexuality has mixed effects on customer responses, the final paper investigates FLEs’ own understandings of the impacts of their sexuality in service exchanges and their approaches to stigma management in their roles. Adopting a qualitative design and employing convergent interviewing techniques, this final paper explores non-heterosexual FLEs’ perspectives and approaches to customer service. Results reveal that FLEs rely on the closet to manage their self-presentations in interactions with customers. FLEs will seek to improve customer outcomes through behavioural controls that either conceal or reveal their sexual orientation depending on service contexts, with customers, colleagues, organisation and industry exerting influence on these decisions. Findings also suggest the presence of a value-creation paradox where non-heterosexual FLEs will reduce customer-focused, value-creating behaviours that are otherwise important contributors to the co-creation process (e.g. maintaining eye contact, engaging in helping behaviour) in effort to reduce customer discomfort and paradoxically improve customer outcomes. From a theoretical perspective, the papers combine to rejuvenate gender discourse in frontline service literature and extend the perspective from FLE gender to the much lesser established area of FLE sexuality. It provides support to the relevance of stigma theory and role congruity theory in contemporary service environments today, and empirically applies implicit inversion theory and the stereotype content model—both previously sparsely examined perspectives in the area of gendered frontline service work. The findings of these papers provide practical implications for service managers as they navigate the complex and evolving field of gender and sexuality in customer service work, including recruitment and hiring, facilitating employee support and engaging post-service customer action to maximise favourable outcomes for service firms.