See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil: a study of defensive organizational behavior towards customer complaints

• DOI: 10.1007/s11747-006-0009-x
• Publication Date: 2007-12-07T12:18:46Z
• Authors: Christian Homburg; Andreas Fürst
• Keywords: Complaint; Phenomenon; Empirical Research; Customer delight

Despite substantial benefits of an effective complaint management for companies, there is ample evidence that many firms do not handle customer complaints appropriately. This paper aims at providing a theoretical explanation for this surprising phenomenon. Drawing on psychological and organizational theory, the authors introduce the concept of defensive organizational behavior towards customer complaints as well as provide a rich conceptualization and operationalization of this phenomenon. Moreover, in an empirical study, they systematically analyze how defensive organizational behavior towards customer complaints is driven by organizational antecedents and, based on a dyadic data set, how it affects customer post-complaint reactions.