Title: Role stress as a barrier to service quality in Indian banks: SEM approach

Authors: Mohd. Adil; Irfana Rashid

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Management Studies & Research, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India ' Department of Management Studies, South Campus, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, J&K, India

Abstract: By and large, service quality is thought as something abstract; ignoring the very basic human emotions and experiences of the employees who deliver the services. These employees experience stressful events which in turn have a direct bearing on quality of service offered by them. This study examines the relationship between role stress and service quality in front-line bank employees (FLBE) of Indian retail banks. A structured questionnaire in English was administered on 350 FLBE of public and non-public banks, out of which 232 filled questionnaires were returned. Relevant statistical techniques were used to examine construct reliability and validity, dimensional analysis and relationship between the variables under the study together with fitness of the proposed model through SEM. Results show that role stress has negatively impacted the performance of FLBE. Of the four stressors, role overload and resource inadequacy emerged as potent stressors.

Keywords: service quality; role stress; front-line employees; retail banking; structural equation modelling; SEM; India; bank employees; role overload; resource inadequacy.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSCI.2013.057648

International Journal of Services Sciences, 2013 Vol.5 No.1, pp.40 - 57

Received: 16 Apr 2012
Accepted: 01 Nov 2012
Published online: 12 Jul 2014 *

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