Frontline mechanisms and business orientations: translation, adaptation, and validation of a scale

Abstract

A company's frontline work can be seen as a three-front battle. The client requires attention and quality service on one side, the organization requires efficiency and productivity on another, and frontline staff is metaphorically caught in the middle. This approach has emerged as a significant issue for Marinova, Ye, and Singh (2008), who developed a scale assessing these factors across five dimensions: two orientations (productivity and quality) and three mechanisms (autonomy, cohesion, and feedback). The main objective of this paper is to adapt the scale and verify if it can be used in Brazil. To this end it was submitted to translation and linguistic validation, and adapted to the context of research and statistical validation. The scale was applied to 105 graduate and undergraduate students, and their results were statistically satisfactory, thus validating the Brazilian version of the scale.