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Introduction
The notion of consumer sovereignty commonly underpins service practices. However, this notion is problematic because it may entitle customers to behave in a dysfunctional manner. As a customer’s intentional behavior that negatively disrupts regular service encounters (Harris and Reynolds, 2003), dysfunctional customer behavior (DCB) is a frequently occurring phenomenon in service settings (Grandey et al., 2004). While DCB encounters can negatively affect the job performance of service employees (Harris and Reynolds, 2003), customers who do not misbehave “are often victimized by others’ misconduct” (Fullerton and Punj, 2004, p. 1239). Because of the prevalence and harm of DCB, “correcting customers constitutes a ‘necessary evil’ for many service providers” (Habel et al., 2017, pp. 919-920).
Although the term “necessary evil” has been mentioned in service literature, service researchers and practitioners predominantly expect service employees to exhibit positive displays during customer encounters, even when dealing with dysfunctional customers (Rupp and Spencer, 2006). However, complying with dysfunctional customers can potentially cause DCB to spread from dysfunctional customers to other customers (Harris and Reynolds, 2003) and produce undesirable consequences for organizations (Beatty et al., 2016). These issues suggest the need for better approaches to managing DCB. To address this literature gap, we propose using “necessary evil” to correct dysfunctional customers as an alternate strategy and examine what constitutes a necessary evil, how it relates to the different response strategies used in handling DCB and what effects it has on customers evaluations.
Building upon the conceptualization of necessary evil from the organizational behavior literature (Margolis and Molinsky, 2008), we define necessary evil as actions through which employees must knowingly and intentionally cause unpleasant experiences to dysfunctional customers to achieve a greater good. For example, when dysfunctional customers verbally abuse employees or other customers, employees can perform a necessary evil by halting the DCBs and/or forcing the dysfunctional customers to leave. These actions are deemed “evil” because of the unpleasant situation caused to the dysfunctional customers. Such “evil” actions are necessary, however, because of the greater good that is achieved for other customers, employees and the company.
Focusing on a context whereby a dysfunctional customer is clearly at fault, we propose a theoretical model of necessary evil applicable for DCB incidents in physical service settings to explore the...