Abstract
This paper tries to place the notion of employee role interpretation within concerns for service quality. More specifically, it argues a case that dyadic analysis reveals that role reinterpretation is a process that can adversely affect service encounters when it takes place within the encounter. The paper addresses the issue of how relationships in personal service encounters deteriorate and explores this issue in the context of tourism and hospitality. The rationale for such an approach is acceptance of the limits of emotional labour and the lack of explanation in the literature for the variable results of normative managerial approaches to service quality. Role interpretation is seen as being distinctive form of coping outside the acting solutions of emotional labour and the purview of organisational culture as it is currently conceived. One consequence of arguing for the salience of role interpretation is a view of job satisfaction that places the concept of ‘job’ as being as important as that of satisfaction with it.