Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

empowerment are perceived to be high, the moderating influence of empowerment on AC and NC couldbe dysfunctional. This suggests that it is crucial for service managers not to empower their FLEs at thecost of role clarity as this could be deleterious for the AC and NC levels that these employees experience,especially when they are not clear about the new role that empowerment bestows on them.Professional development was found to moderate the relationships that role conflict bears with ACand NC. The results of the moderated regression analyses suggest that FLEs who perceived highprofessional development activities rated their AC and NC levels to be higher than those who did not,regardless of the level of role conflict they experienced. Since professional development activities areperceived as the organisation‘s concern for its employees‘ future prospects of their advancement withinthe organisation, this perceived concern creates feelings of attachment (AC) and obligation (NC) on thepart of the employees to reciprocate the costs associated with development activities incurred by theorganization (Scholl 1981, Meyer and Allen 1991).Role conflict is, regrettably, unavoidable in front-line positions. It is, therefore, most encouragingto find that investing ‗scarce‘ resources in professional development programs for front-line staff couldprove effective in alleviating the dysfunctional influence of role conflict on their AC and NC levels,besides enhancing the skills and knowledge of front-line staff. These findings add further support toMeyer and Smith‘s (2000) findings that professional development activities are crucial for fostering ACand NC among employees.Limitations and future research directionsSince all respondents in this study are employees of a single organization operating in the UKtravel service industry, it would be beneficial for future work to test our hypotheses using longitudinaldata in different service contexts, to improve upon the generalisability of our findings. It would also beuseful to extend the study in non-western context such as India and China.