Worst case scenario: sexual harassment of clients as a joint function of economic dependence and emotional labor.

Kundro, TG, Burke, V., Grandey, AA, and Sayre, GM (2021). The worst of all worlds: Customer sexual harassment as a joint function of economic dependence and emotional labor. Journal of Applied Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000895

Commentary

This study will investigate the factors that contribute to sexual harassment received from customers.

Sexual harassment from customers is prevalent every time an employee or organization provides a service, and it can be expensive to deal with.

Based on a theoretical model of power in organizations, the study proved the hypothesis that sexual harassment is a function of employees' economic dependence on customers and their respect for customers with emotional labor jointly activating customer power. A field study of employees with different requirements for economic dependence and emotional display, who fell over (Study 1), and an online experiment manipulating economic dependence and emotional display from the customer's perspective (Study 2), ended up jointly confirming these contextual factors.

The results show that these behaviors empower customers and increase sexual harassment, and the study has important practical implications.

It is suggested that organizations may not be able to reduce customer sexual harassment without changing their reward models and emotional labor expectations in the service context.