The role of frontline service employee’s performance for the service firm’s success has long been emphasized by research scholars, practitioners and business professionals (e.g., Rucci, et al., 1998). The significance of the frontline service employees’ performance stems from the fact that these employees have a mandate to interact directly with the customers and they play what is called a boundary spanning role in the services marketing literature (Bateson, 1989). This is more so that there is no scope of trial and rejection in service encounter. The quality of service experience depends entirely upon the quality of interaction that takes place between a customer and the frontline employee. Thus, to ensure frontline employees’ service performance as desired by the customers and management is both significant and equally challenging.

Considering the unprecedented growth of service sector and neck to neck competition amongst the service providers, service managers have necessarily to pay greater attention to all the antecedents those improve front line employees’ service performance. This in turn is crucial for quality of service interaction and consequent customer outcomes. However, the antecedents and consequences of desired service performance of frontline employees at contact level have received not as much attention as it deserves from research scholars (Jagdip, 2000).

Researchers can explore various antecedents of desired frontline service employee performance with an aim to help service managers improve their performance. Among the ways, the focus of the present study is job crafting of service employee that is expected to positively influence both their service performance and consequent desired customer or organisational outcomes (customer loyalty in the present study).

STRUCTURE OF THE ARTICLE:

The next section that follows will review the relevant literature around the concept of job crafting as considered in the present study. This follows the discussions that clarify the basis of relationships between several dimensions and consequent hypotheses of the study. Next, an attempt is made to highlight the research gaps and rationale of the study. This follows the methodology including data collection, the sample, the research instruments, analysis and results. Based on the results of the study, conclusions are drawn, managerial implications are discussed and finally, directions for future research are also discussed.

LITERATURE OF JOB CRAFTING:

The concept of job crafting owes its origin to the traditional theorists of job design who view job design as a top down function carried out by managers for designing jobs of their employees. These theorists (Campion and McClelland, 1993; Hackman and Oldham, 1980) believed that mangers play a significant role in designing the jobs of their employees. The literature on the subject was complimented by subsequent studies (e.g., Miner, 1987; Black and Ashford, 1995; Grant and Ashford, 2008), those shifted the emphasis from manager’s role to that of employee’s role in the process of job design. The shift in the recognition of the role from managers to that of employees gave birth to the concept of job crafting. Accordingly, the concept of job crafting is viewed as a bottom top approach, whereby instead of mangers initiating and directing changes from the top down, it is the employee who brings about changes in the their jobs from the bottom up. Specifically, the term job crafting was coined by Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001) who defined it as ‘‘the physical and cognitive changes individuals make in the task or relational boundaries of their work’’ (p. 179).

Job crafting is a bottom top approach, whereby, the employee alter the boundaries of their jobs i.e. increasing or decreasing the number of tasks to perform, or altering the way they are performed (physical crafting). The employee may alter the way he decides to interact with others at work place both quantitatively and qualitatively (relational crafting).Finally, the employee may also alter the way he or she perceives different tasks and relationships between those tasks that finally make their job as a whole (cognitive crafting) (Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001; Leana et al., 2009; Tims and Bakker, 2010; Tims et al., 2012).

The alternative way to understand the job crafting construct and its dimensions is to understand Tims et al’s (2012) perspective. The Tims and his associates looked job crafting through the frame work what is popularly known as JD-R model (Demerouti et al., 2001; Bakker and Demerouti, 2007). The JD-R model classifies characteristics of work environment into two general categories, i.e., job demands and job resources. The first category refers to physical, social or organizational job demands and the latter category refer to physical, social or psychological supports. The former require for sustained physical and psychological effort on the part of employee and the later not only act as resources to facilitate employees’ performance but also help them grow at individual level. The authors define job crafting as the changes that employees may bring about in these job demands and job supports. The alterations are mainly done to offset, imbalance, if any, found in their job demands and job resources with reference to their peculiar set of skills and requirements. The possible changes that an employee may generally bring about into their jobs are classified into following four dimensions by Tims et al. (2012).

1. Increasing structural job resources: Employees may look for ways as to how to change and increase the structural resources to ensure better outcomes both at individual and organisational level. These sources for instance can be like employee aspiring for resources variety, opportunity for development, autonomy, responsibility, gaining more job related knowledge that leads to their self-development.

2. Decreasing hindering job demands: On finding job demands as being overwhelming, employees may attempt to lower down the tasks those are deemed to tell upon their physical health, psyche and overall wellbeing. They may try job alterations to make their job emotionally less demanding. They may for instance try to remain away from people, who affect them emotionally, or will refrain from working for long hours and from taking difficult decisions.

3. Increasing social job resources: employees look to alter their social environment that has bearing upon the social aspects of their job. These efforts may include e.g., asking for advice and feedback from surroundings, maintaining desired quantity and quality of interaction to gain social support at the work place.

4. Increasing challenging job demands: Employees may alter their jobs to make it more challenging and consequently avoid boredom. The content of challenge in one’s job is considered one of the significant drivers for one’s motivation. The instances e.g., can be taking keen interest in new developments, new assignments, and taking on extra responsibilities even without expecting extra benefits within the formal reward structure of the organisation.

Job crafting has emerged as a significant antecedent of several desired outcomes in organisational context. Specifically, the outcomes include organisational commitment, job effectiveness and lower absenteeism (Ghitulescu,2006) employee satisfaction (Berg et al.,2008), employee initiative, persistence and action (Crant, 1995), employee retention (Kristof et al.,2005), person-environment fit and consequent reduction of employee stress (Sulsky and Smith, 2005), better organizational performance (Worline, et al., 2002), employee positive attitudes towards work meaning and work identity (Fine, 1996; Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001).Further, task crafting, one of the crafting attitude of employees is linked with better work place operations (Fletcher, 1998; Star and Strauss, 1999).This is in view of the fact that employees generally alter tasks within their job with an aim to reduce obstacles and faults which in turn results in improvement in their work flow and the ultimate work performance.

Job Crafting, Service Employee Performance and customer loyalty

Job crafting of service employees is expected to be improve their performance for several reasons, those are duly supported by relevant literature as follows:

First, employees feel satisfied and motivated when their job crafting proves beneficial as evidenced by consequent improved performance. Since, employees alter their jobs only after they sense some latitude to do so in their work environment and subsequently they are further encouraged to do so for it results in better performance. This encouragement acts as an indirect authorization to employees for job crafting. The dimension of ‘feeling authorized’ or what is also referred as “self-perceived decision making authority “in the relevant literature has been indicated as one of the significant driver of customer orientation of service employees (COSE) by several authors in past (Henning-Thurau, et al., 2003; Henning-Thurau, 2004; Siddiqi, 2009).In turn customer orientation of service employees (COSE) is revealed as crucial factor for desired service performance (Sergeant and Frenkel, 2000; Brown et al., 2002).Evidenced in past research, the sense of feeling authorized can happen more with the frontline service employees as they being at lower ranks are less constrained than those working at higher ranks in the organisation to adapt their work environment and better craft their jobs (Berg et al., 2009).Thus, owing to latitude for and actual job crafting, there is much scope for frontline service employee to feel authorized. This in turn facilitates customer orientation of service employee and consequent desired service performance.

Second, job crafting makes jobs more purposeful and by implication improve employee motivation and job satisfaction. Numerous empirical studies (e.g., Mackenzie et al., 1998) have indicated that satisfied employees have enough motivational resources to perform their job with adequate service effort and care in service encounter. Service effort has been indicated as significant antecedent to customers’ service quality perception (Yoon and Suh, 2003). Additionally, satisfied employees provide customers with adequate explanations for undesirable outcomes (interpersonal sensitivity and social account) that again improve the customer service experience. Further, job crafters generally exhibit higher commitment to see their suggestions being implemented practically. This again results into higher level of commitment and satisfaction which have long been associated with higher level of customer satisfaction in service context (Ivar Rossberg, et al., 2008).

Third, drawing on social exchange theory (SET), on realizing that management benefits employees by offering scope for making alterations in their jobs to suit employee tastes, preferences and qualifications, employees in turn, look for ways to reciprocate to benefit the organisations (Shore and Shore, 1995). This positive feeling among job crafters is expected to get reflected in their service performance as delivering better services to their customers seems to be the best way of reciprocating and benefiting their organisation. Therefore, employees who engage in job crafting are most likely to serve their customers better.

Third, after job crafting employee feel their jobs as more worthwhile, purposeful or something they should be proud of. Considering, the identity theory, it enhances their sense of self respect, self-identification and belongingness to their jobs(lscoocco,1989).Therefore, employees those who craft their jobs do identify themselves more strongly with their jobs and experience higher sense of belongingness with their organisations. All these positive feelings are reported as significant drivers of excellent service delivery and consequent desired customer and organisational outcomes in the past (Daan Van, 2000).

Thus the above discussion has clarified the basis for the following hypothesis:

H1 greater the level of job crafting of service employee, greater will be the service performance.

Customer loyalty refers to customer’s intentions to stay with the existing firm for a long period. Organisations endeavour for building long term relationship with their customers for several desired consequences. One of the most significant consequences revealed by countless authors is that firms are able to retain most profitable customers, thus leads to firm’s long term economic survival and success (e.g., Berry, 1995; Heskett et al., 1994). This is perhaps due to the fact that firms are better able to understand their customer’s requirements and develop efficiency by dealing repeatedly with the same customers over a long period of time, thus rendering loyal customers as more profitable (Dawkins and Reichheld, 1990).Further; it costs more to acquire new customers than to maintain relationship with the existing customers. Research suggests that an improvement of 5% in customer retention is reported to result into an improvement of 100 percent in firms profits (Reichheld and Sasser, 1990).

The customer loyalty with the existing firm is a function of his or her level of satisfaction with the service experience (Kelley and Davis, 1994). To put other way, how far, a customer believes that his or her expectations are dully fulfilled by the service provider, makes sense in customer evaluation of the service experience and if the customer feels good about it, s/he prefers the same service provider over others and expects the same level of experience in future as well (Crosby et al., 1990).Therefore, this study reasonably assumes service performance as a significant factor in predicting customer loyalty and proposes the following hypothesis:

H2 greater the service employee performance, greater will be the customer loyalty.

The internal marketing philosophy suggests that satisfaction of firm’s employees (internal customers) is well reflected into satisfaction of firm’s customers (external customers). In fact, job attitudinal issues like employee satisfaction, motivation, commitment and the like constitute the area of interest for earlier scholars from internal marketing field for that they strongly predict desired customer outcomes (see e.g. George, 1990).The discussion supported by literature justifying H1 earlier in this article supports the view that all these positive job attitudes can be as a consequences of job crafting of service employees. Therefore, it is expected that these positive job attitudes of service employee including job satisfaction, commitment, motivation triggered by job crafting will duly get reflected into firm’s external customers in terms of their commitment to firm. Accordingly, the third hypothesis is proposed as:

H3 greater the job crafting of service employee, greater will be the customer loyalty.

The above literature has justified the assumption of H1 to H3, whereby, job crafting is assumed as one of the driver of service employee performance(H1),which in turn is assumed as an antecedent to customer loyalty(H2). Further, job crafting is also assumed as a direct predictor of customer loyalty (H3).In such situations, where ever, an antecedents can be related to some variable which in turn can effect some other outcome variable, there is possibilities of testing mediation effects of the mediating variable(see fig 1 for reference). Thus, last hypothesis of the study is proposed as:

H4 employees’ service performance mediates the relationship between employee job crafting and customer loyalty.

RESEARCH GAPS AND RATIONALE:

The concept of job crafting itself is of recent origin as the term was recently coined by Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001) as a bottom-top view to complement the concept of job design. Thus, as yet, the concept of job crafting has received little attention from the researchers in organisational studies (Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001). Further, the studies around this concept are generally found theoretical or qualitative in nature (Tims et al., 2012). No doubt, a few empirical studies (e.g., Ghitulescu, 2006; Leana et al., 2009) have been conducted in past, yet, they are restricted to education and manufacturing setting only (Tims et al., 2012). Very recently, lack of empirical studies and advances in understanding of the concept of job crafting is indirectly attributed to lack of measuring scales for job crafting (Tims and Bakker, 2010; Tims et al., 2012). This is particularly in Asian region where till now no study has been published that links job crafting with performance in service context to the best of the authors knowledge and belief. In fact, there have been so many research calls that would examine job crafting behaviours and its possible consequences at employee and organisational level (e.g., Tims et al., 2012).In view of the growing significance of the concept, the diffusion of the understanding of the concept among the service mangers appears to be the need of the hour to help them create a professional service culture particularly in Indian context.

This study attempts to add incrementally to the existing literature in several ways.

First, an indirect impact of employee job crafting on customer loyalty, mediated by service employee performance in this study is assessed for the first time in service marketing literature.

Second, researchers in past have worked in a significant way around the concept of job design (a top down approach of managers designing employee jobs), yet to examine the changes that are informally brought about in a job by an employee what is referred as job crafting (a bottom up approach of designing jobs) would complement the previous literature that exists around job design.

Third, on being inspired by the work of Tims et al. (2012), the present study is the first attempt that has adopted job crafting as a four dimensional construct and assessed it’s both direct as well as indirect impact on customer loyalty separately.

Finally, this study is expected to better equip service managers to deal with frontline employee performance and customer turnover related issues. Although job crafting might have been examined in the west, nevertheless, on account of the dynamics of culture, environment, testing of the relationship in Indian service sector would be a meaningful attempt to see if the causal relationship hold equally true in this part of the world as well or not.

METHODOLOGY:

Investigations were carried out to assess the causal effects between service employee job crafting, customer perceived employee performance and customer loyalty. The detailed methodology followed is as:

Data collection and the sample:

The primary data was collected from several branches of four (4) prestigious banks in India (SBI, PNB, J and K bank Ltd and Standard Chartered Bank.), operating in the states of Delhi, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. The proportionate stratified sampling procedure was followed to consider all the possible categories like rural, semi-rural, urban, and metropolitan in the sample. The employees were given questionnaire to capture the notion about various dimensions of job crafting. However, their service performance and customer loyalty was reported by customers again by reacting to questionnaires. Each frontline employee was requested to respond to one employee questionnaire and distribute four (04) customer questionnaires among customers. A common identification number was allotted to frontline employee and customer questionnaire to facilitate the matching process of the employee and customer responses. This kind of matching process is suggested by numerous authors (see e.g., Schneider and Bowen, 1985). The customer responses were then aggregated (averaged) through simple arithmetic mean and then matched with the mean scores of employee perceptions about various dimensions of job crafting. Out of 360, as many as 212 completed and usable questionnaires completed by employees were received resulting into a response rate of 59 percent. Out of 350, as many as 207 duly responded survey instruments by employees were received resulting into a response rate of 59 percent, while as 597 of 1100 (54 per cent) customer questionnaires were usable for final analysis. The average response of number of customer per employee was 3.

The Research Instruments and Scale Purification

Lickert’s 5- point scale, ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5) was used throughout the study to reflect the respondents’ agreement or disagreement level to each item. Items of various scales were deleted during the preliminary scale purification process that includes item-scale correlations and exploratory factor analysis. Further Items whose factor loading was less than 0.40 or cross loaded were deleted. After deletions, all scale items were statistically significant and all scales showed unidimensionality in terms of model fit indices and face validity.

Table 1-Descriptive Statistics, Inter-Item Correlations and Alpha Values of the Variables

*Variables*	*Mean*	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6
1. (ISJR-1) 2. (DHJD) 3. (ISJR-2) 4.(ICJD) 5. (SEP) 6 .(CL)	3.36 3.68 2.84 3.01 2.69 2.96	0.673 0.882 0.756 0.734 0.579 0.772	0.24* 0.37* 0.33* 0.25* 0.36*	0.27* 0.31* 0.20* 0.37*	0.29* 0.28* 0.34*	0.35* 0.29*	0.39*
Cronbatch alpha			0.79	0.76	0.67	0.59	0.74	0.69
Notes: x2 = 836.1, df = 347, p < .05, RMR = 0:045, GFI = 0:78, AGFI =0:79, CFI = 0:91 (ISJR-1) :Increasing Structural Job Resources ; (DHJD):Decreasing Hindering Job Demands; (ISJR-2) :Increasing Social Job Resources ; (ICJD):Increasing Challenging Job Demands; (SEP): Service Employee Performance ; and (CL): Customer Loyalty.

The Cronbatch alpha, although, being slightly low in some cases was not considered an analytical issue for the measurement model provides a reasonable fit to the data. Additionally, the alpha- estimates are nearer the cutoff point (0.70) and the factor loadings (ranging from 0.47 to 0.78) of the constituent items are also satisfactory.

Table 2: Standard coefficients from LISREL results for causal relations between job crafting-dimensions and service employee performance.

Independent Variables	Job Crafting- Dimensions	Dependent Variable (SEP)
	(ISJR-1)	0.383^*
	(DHJD)	0.261^*
	(ISJR-2)	0.446^*
	(ICJD)	0.396^*
	R²	0.374

Note * <.001; (ISJR-1): Increasing Structural Job Resources; (DHJD): Decreasing Hindering Job Demands;

(ISJR-2): Increasing Social Job Resources; (ICJD): Increasing Challenging Job Demands; and (SEP): Service Employee Performance.

The estimated R² in Table 2 suggest that a variation 37 percent in service employee performance is explained by various elements of job crafting. Specifically, increasing social job resources by the service employee is the most influential (b = 0.446, p <.001) component of employee job crafting on his or her service performance. The influence is followed by increasing challenging job demands (b = 0.396, p <.001), increasing structural job resources (b = 0. 383, p <.001) and finally by decreasing hindering job demands (b = 0. 0.261, p <.001). Taken together, the path coefficients clearly reveal that all the dimensions of employee job crafting exert a positive as well as significant effect on service employee performance .Therefore, ample evidence is found in support of the H1 that greater the level of job crafting of service employee, greater will be the service performance. Importantly, the ascertained path coefficient (b = 0.547, p <.001) between service employee performance and customer loyalty fully support the H2 that greater the service employee performance, greater will be the customer loyalty.

The Direct and Indirect Effects of Job Crafting on Customer Loyalty

The causal effects of various variables of job crafting on customer loyalty both directly and indirectly via service employee performance were ascertained as follows:

Table 3- Decomposed Direct, Indirect and Total Effects of Dimensions of Job Crafting On Customer Loyalty

Dimensions of Job Crafting	Customer Loyalty (Dependent Variable)
(Independent Variable)	Direct effect	Indirect effect	Total effect
1-(ISJR-1)	0.254*	0.063*	0.317*
2-(DHJD)	0.183**	0.192*	0.375**
3-(ISJR-2)	0.406*	0.048*	0.454*
4-(ICJD)	0.203**	0.230**	0.433**

Note: * significant at p <.01; ** significant at p <.05(ISJR-1) :Increasing Structural Job Resources ; (DHJD):Decreasing Hindering Job Demands; (ISJR-2) :Increasing Social Job Resources ; (ICJD):Increasing Challenging Job Demands;and (CL): Customer Loyalty.

Direct effects: The statistics in Table 3 reveal that increasing social job resources is one of the most powerful elements of job crafting that exerts its direct effect on customer loyalty (b = 0.406, p <.01), followed by increasing structural job resources (b = 0.254, p <.01). Though both decreasing hindering job demands and increasing challenging job demands also appear to be influential elements, yet, exerting only partial direct effect on customer loyalty (b = 0.183 and 0.203 respectively both found significant at p <.05)

Indirect effects: Apart from above direct relationships, the statistics in Table 3 also indicate several significant and positive indirect relationships. Specifically, increasing challenging job demands appears to be the most significant indirect factor on customer loyalty (b = 0.230, p <.05), followed by decreasing hindering job demands (b = 0.192, p <.01). Increasing social job resources exerts its least indirect effect on customer loyalty (b = 0.048, p <.01). Thus, considering the overall direct as well as indirect effects of job crafting variables on customer loyalty, there is ample evidence in support of H3 that greater the job crafting of service employee, greater will be the customer loyalty.

Mediating effects: Analyzing the magnitude of direct and indirect causal effects of various job crafting variables on customer loyalty, it is observed that both the decreasing hindering job demands and increasing challenging job demands exerts significant and substantial indirect effects (around half of the total effect) on customer loyalty. This suggests a significant partial mediation of intermediating variables. However, both increasing social job resources and increasing structural job resources exert only marginal indirect effect indicating not so much of intermediating role of intermediating variable i.e., of employee performance. Considering the substantial and significant indirect effects of second and third variable on customer loyalty, it is safe to accept H4 that employees’ service performance mediates the relationship between employee job crafting and customer loyalty.

DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS:

The present study examined the ancestor role of service employee job crafting in predicting their service performance and customer loyalty. All the hypotheses about several positive effects of service employee job crafting on their service performance and customer loyalty were proved true. Apart from direct effects of job crafting on customer loyalty, the study revealed some indirect effects of job crafting on customer loyalty vial employee service performance. Therefore, the study also highlighted mediating role being played by service employee performance between service employee job crafting and customer loyalty. These direct as well as indirect linkages highlight the relevance of various job crafting variables to desired performance outcomes in services setting.

The estimated R² suggest that the four dimensional job crafting over all explain a variation of 37 percent in employee service performance. All the drivers of job crafting are significant for both employee performance and customer loyalty.However, an important observation is the least substantial however significant indirect effects of increasing social job resources (20%of the total effect) and increasing structural job resources (11%of the total effect) in the causal relationship. This is perhaps due to the fact that the direct effect of the very variables on customer loyalty are more prominent, thus leaving little room for the indirect effects. The essence of the results is that service firms need to promote more of these job crafting attitudes as they are more prominent in predicting customer loyalty in the direct path. Additionally, the present study has indicated job crafting attitudes as beneficial in service setting as has been proved so in non-service context in past.

MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS:

In view of the examination of the causal relationships between employee job-crafting attitudes, their service performance and the consequent customer loyalty in the present study, service managers need to be sensitive to the emerging relevance of this concept to their field. More specifically, service managers need to continuously provide an ample opportunity to their employees to craft their jobs .This is in view of the fact that literature on job crafting suggests that employees are not only keen but they seize opportunities to craft their jobs (Berg, et al., 2010). Thus, encouraging and monitoring various job-crafting attitudes among service employees to facilitate their service oriented environment should form as an important part of service mangers’ job.

Reward system of an organisation has long been established as a strong factor that shapes employees behaviour. Service managers, through rewards and incentives can encourage or dis-courage individuals to bring about desired changes in the relational and task boundaries of their job. Managers may design the job itself in a way that provide an ample scope and encourage employees' craving to voice their job crafting intentions. Similarly, the forms of job crafting, at the least those highlighted in the study need to be given due importance in employee performance appraisals. Linking employee job crafting efforts and its effectiveness with rewards, performance appraisals, incentives, and promotions is one of the worthwhile implications of the present study. Further, organisations can identify relevant standards specific to their industry for measurement and control of crafting attitudes at individual, group, division or business unit level. The same can also become basis for deciding about managerial and employee awards.

Service managers need to develop an appreciation of the fact that although job crafting is easy yet crafting that yield desired organizational results is not that easy as suggested by scholars in past (Berg, et al.,2009). Employees should be supported and properly trained to craft their task as well as relational boundaries in a way that ultimately contribute to beneficial rather than to detrimental crafting. The identification and arrangement of various job resources that has relevance to and facilitate job crafting can enhance beneficial job crafting attitudes and consequent desired performance outcomes. Finally, considering the fact that job crafting is essentially a bottom top approach of job design, upward communication needs to be encouraged at all levels to facilitate frontline employees’ involvement in job crafting.

Trust plays a significant role in employee active involvement in job crafting for they feel more comfortable and responsible in taking possible risks associated with job crafting. Berg et al. (2009). The service managers need to avoid criticizing service employee even if they commit mistakes in crafting their jobs.

LIMITATIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH:

First, while adopting Tims et al.’s (2012) four dimensional job crafting-construct, this study considers increasing structural job resources, decreasing hindering job demands, increasing social job resources, and increasing challenging job demands as the antecedents of employee job crafting in the causal relationships. However, dimensions those which are discussed in review of literature section of this study and not adopted in the present model can also be considered in future research. For instance, the three dimensions of job crafting like task crafting, relational crafting and cognitive crafting (Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001) can be one more perspective of looking at the concept of job crafting and accordingly studies can be conducted to assess its impact upon various performance variables.

Second, although the present study was conducted with one of the aim to focus on the consequences of job crafting in Indian service context. Research that would focus on the antecedent side of job crafting with due considerations of varying cultural variables, would be a significant contribution in this area.

Third, all the crafting attitudes, may not be equally beneficial across sectors. Therefore, measurement of their respective utility in varying work environments and consequent prioritization thereof seems to be a worthwhile attempt. The significance of prioritization stems from the fact that given the financial, time and energy constraints; service managers may not always find it easy to make all kinds of work arrangement to encourage all types of crafting attitudes among their employees. Consequently, organizations can invest only in those work arrangements which are considered to be more influential for driving most beneficial employee crafting attitudes, peculiar to a specific work environment.

Fourth, considering the samples from Indian banking sector within a limited geographic area, the author is concerned about generalization of the conclusions. The replication works in the similar and other contexts are required to confirm the results. This is particularly with reference to the magnitudes of direct and indirect effects those have been ascertained in the present study.

Fifth, while examining the consequences of various dimensions of job crafting on frontline service employee, service performance was the single measure considered in this study. Therefore, investigating consequences of job crafting on service employee job attitudes like their commitment, satisfaction, esprit de corps, involvement, service effort level, employee retention, organizational citizenship behaviour, innovative work behaviour, job engagement, etc., can complement the existing literature on job crafting. Similarly, customer loyalty was the only final outcome variable considered in the analysis. Various constructs those also reflect the organisational performance of a service organisation like customer service quality perception, their satisfaction, ROI, corporate image, market share, cost of producing services, adaptability, customer complaints, service failure recovery, customer retention and their behavioural intensions seems to be need of the hour especially in Asian context.

Finally, both the distribution and collection of customer questionnaires was done through the frontline employees themselves. The approach must have given some room for bias in the customer responses that need to be taken care by administering questionnaires directly on customers by the investigators in future studies.

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Received on 25.03.2015 Modified on 04.04.2015

Asian J. Management; 6(3): July-Sept., 2015 page 149-158

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5763.2015.00022.0