The relationship of customer satisfaction and service workers’ perceived control: Examination of three models

The study examined three models that suggested direct, mediated, and moderated relationships among personality and situational variables relating to the service provider and customer satisfaction. Questionnaires were administered to 151 service provider‐customer dyads. The results support the model describing a mediation by job‐related control of the relationship between organizational variables relating to the service provider, on the one hand, and customer satisfaction, on the other. The service provider’s trait control was found to contribute to the prediction of job‐related control over and above the contribution of the organizational variables. Trait control moderates the relationship between empowering leadership and job‐related control, such that the relationship is significant only when trait control is low.