Introduction
The human resources (HR) department plays a critical role in supporting organizational functions. Yet, HR professionals increasingly encounter complaints and unreasonable demands from internal customers (i.e., employees and supervisors). How and when such complaints lead to either constructive or deviant outcomes remains unclear.
Purpose
Drawing on cognitive theories of rumination and stress-coping theory, this study examines the psychological mechanisms linking internal customer complaints to HR professionals' customer-directed voice and deviant behaviors. We further investigate the moderating roles of supervisory support and proactive personality.
Method
We employed a weekly experience sampling design across four consecutive weeks, collecting data from 140 HR professional-coworker dyads, yielding 404 valid weekly paired observations. Hypotheses were tested using multilevel path analysis.
Results
Findings revealed two distinct pathways. First, weekly internal customer complaints heightened HR professionals' affective rumination, which subsequently increased their customer-directed deviant behaviors. However, this detrimental indirect effect was attenuated when supervisors were supportive. Second, for HR professionals high in proactive personality, internal customer complaints increased their problem-solving pondering, which enhanced subsequent customer-directed voice. However, this constructive indirect effect was not significant for less proactive HR professionals.
Conclusions
This study demonstrates that internal customer complaints can trigger divergent outcomes for HR professionals, depending on contextual and individual factors. By integrating affective rumination and problem-solving pondering as dual mechanisms, and identifying supervisory support and proactive personality as boundary conditions, the findings contribute to research on workplace stress and proactive behaviors. Practically, the results highlight the importance of fostering supervisors' support and developing HR professionals' proactivity to encourage constructive responses and mitigate harmful consequences of customer complaints.