What matters for employees’ daily interpersonal behaviors?

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the impact of service employees’ agreeableness personality and daily self-esteem on their daily interpersonal behaviors in terms of interpersonal harmony and counterproductive work behavior toward other individuals (CWB-I). Furthermore, this study examines whether the impact of daily self-esteem on daily interpersonal behaviors is moderated by the quality of service employees’ relationship with their manager and leader–member exchange (LMX). Design/methodology/approach: Using a sample of 111 restaurant employees in China who took daily surveys with 1,412 ratings for 10 consecutive days, a longitudinal analysis was conducted to test the research hypotheses using hierarchical linear modeling. Findings: The results show that agreeableness personality predicted daily interpersonal harmony but had no significant effect on daily CWB-I. It was also found that daily self-esteem predicted both daily interpersonal harmony and daily CWB-I, and LMX moderated the effect of daily self-esteem on daily interpersonal behaviors. Practical implications: Given the fluctuation of employees’ interpersonal behaviors, organizations should guide the variability of interpersonal behaviors in the positive direction. To promote daily interpersonal harmony and reduce daily CWB-I, managers could focus on recruiting employees with agreeableness, offering daily self-esteem training and enhancing the quality of LMX. Originality/value: This research is unique in its objectives to examine what influences service employees’ interpersonal behaviors on a daily basis and its methods to implement a longitudinal approach unlike previous studies that often relied on cross-sectional designs to enhance the ecological validity of the findings.