Effects of workplace bullying on job burnout and customer orientation in the casino industry: The conservation of resources perspective

Abstract

Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study empirically examined the effects of workplace bullying on job burnout and customer orientation among casino employees. Workplace bullying was divided into two dimensions—relational bullying and physical and verbal bullying—and the direct effects of each dimension, as well as their indirect effects through job burnout, were analyzed. A survey was conducted among frontline employees at foreigner-only casinos in Seoul and Busan, South Korea, and 140 valid responses were analyzed with IBM SPSS Statistics and SmartPLS. PLS-SEM results supported the reliability and validity of two workplace bullying dimensions: relational bullying and physical/verbal bullying. Both dimensions had significant positive effects on job burnout, and job burnout had a significant negative effect on customer orientation. Relational bullying also had a direct negative effect on customer orientation, whereas the direct effect of physical and verbal bullying was not significant. Job burnout partially mediated the relationship between relational bullying and customer orientation and fully mediated that between physical and verbal bullying and customer orientation. These findings indicate that relational bullying weakens customer orientation both directly and indirectly through job burnout, whereas physical and verbal bullying diminishes it mainly by way of job burnout. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that the pathways of resource loss and of decline in customer orientation may differ depending on the type of workplace bullying in the casino industry, and offers practical implications for bullying prevention, employee burnout management, and frontline service quality improvement.