This study aimed to identify the structural causal relationships among key factors influencing the customer-oriented attitude of workers in long-term care institutions for the elderly, and to derive policy implications to enhance such attitudes. To ac...
This study aimed to identify the structural causal relationships among key factors influencing the customer-oriented attitude of workers in long-term care institutions for the elderly, and to derive policy implications to enhance such attitudes. To achieve this, a survey was conducted with 403 employees working in long-term care institutions located in Busan, South Korea. In addition to quantitative analysis, in-depth interviews were conducted as a qualitative analysis method. While previous studies have tended to rely solely on either quantitative or qualitative methods, this study employs both to enhance academic contribution and theoretical development. The variables analyzed included distributive justice, supervisor support, sense of calling, self-efficacy, and organizational citizenship behavior. The relationships among these variables were tested using structural equation modeling. Descriptive statistics revealed that the average score for customer-oriented attitude was 3.87 on a 5-point scale. Although this indicates a generally positive level, it falls slightly short of the expected standard. Notably, customer-oriented attitude was higher among older employees and those with longer tenure. By institution type, home-visit care workers exhibited the highest levels of customer orientation, while nursing home workers showed the lowest. This suggests that the unique working environment and emotional labor intensity in nursing homes may negatively affect customer responsiveness. Examining the average scores of individual variables, self-efficacy (3.92), organizational citizenship behavior (3.93), and sense of calling (3.91) were all relatively high. In contrast, distributive justice recorded the lowest score (3.42), indicating a relatively strong dissatisfaction with the organization’s reward and evaluation systems. This perception may negatively influence employees’ attitudes and organizational commitment. The structural model analysis identified sense of calling as the most influential factor directly affecting customer-oriented attitude (β = .467, p < .001). Organizational citizenship behavior also had a significant effect, though unexpectedly in a negative direction (β = –.136, p < .05). Self-efficacy did not have a statistically significant direct effect on customer-oriented attitude but showed an indirect influence mediated by organizational citizenship behavior. Specifically, sense of calling had a strong effect on self-efficacy (β = .829, p < .001), and self-efficacy, in turn, influenced organizational citizenship behavior (β = .215, p < .05), revealing a structural pathway. This demonstrates that sense of calling indirectly affects customer-oriented attitude through a dual mediation mechanism involving self-efficacy and organizational citizenship behavior, underscoring the importance of intrinsic psychological resources in forming such attitudes. On the other hand, variables previously identified as significant— such as distributive justice and supervisor support—were not statistically significant in this study, either directly or indirectly. This suggests that their explanatory power may have been diluted by the inclusion of sense of calling and organizational citizenship behavior, raising the possibility that sense of calling could function as a spurious variable. In the qualitative analysis of customer-oriented attitudes, explicit dissatisfaction with distributive justice emerged. Workers repeatedly expressed concerns such as “There are no incentives even if I work more,” and “Performance is not reflected fairly.” These qualitative statements contrast with the non-significance found in the quantitative analysis and imply that distributive justice may influence customer-oriented attitudes indirectly through mediating variables like organizational trust, job satisfaction, or turnover intention. This suggests the need for future studies to restructure the analytical pathways related to distributive justice. In conclusion, this study identifies sense of calling as the core variable explaining customer-oriented attitude and empirically validates the linkage mechanism involving self-efficacy and organizational citizenship behavior. Furthermore, the unusual finding that organizational citizenship behavior may negatively affect customer-oriented attitude suggests that excessive internal commitment could undermine external customer responsiveness. These findings imply that strengthening customer-oriented attitudes should not rely solely on individual efforts. Instead, comprehensive institutional interventions—such as fostering a sense of calling, improving organizational culture, and establishing fair compensation systems— must be implemented concurrently.