Likert Scale - Treatment of Neutral or Mid-Point of 5-Pt Scale I'm seeking direction for the fit of a 5-point Likert scale attitudinal survey response to a 4-point scale that omits the center or Neutral response.
I am challenged by a very large corporate customer to assign and justify the assignment of the mid-range respondent answers to a 4-point model ranging from very satisfied to very dissatisfied. My results overall do not fit a normal distribution; rather, they skew strongly positive with the largest response frequencies being Very Satisfied (47% of total) and Satisfied (40% of total). The customer assumes that Neutral responses should be assigned to the negative, while I believe there is likely a proven approach to dividing the Neutrals between positive and negative satisfaction that mirrors the proportional split between the Very Satisfied and Satisfied versus the Dissatisfied and Very Dissatisfied.
Is there an approach that is supported by statistics and attitudinal research I should be following?
 A: Attitudes measures are infamous for displaying that negative skew that you are noticing. Generally this is because people: 
A) Feel like the socially desirable thing to do is say you're happy. 
B) Are generally happy, because if they weren't they would have left the organization and wouldn't be in your dataset
Generally it is not advisable to divide a continuum (or even a pseudo-continuum) into a dichotomous variable of satisfied or not satisfied. Its removing potentially important variance, and if you want to make any predictive model off of it, you will be shooting yourself in the foot. Because of this I dont think attitudinal research will have an answer to your problem, most researchers wouldn't see the point of removing variance.   If your client is pressuring you to do this though, you can divide it into "satisfied" (4 and 5) and "not satisfied" (1-3). Technically a neutral stance does mean that they are not "not satisfied" it also means that they are "not dissatisfied" though. Hope that helps, good luck appeasing the customer!
A: This question seems to be about both modeling, ethics and cooperation/communication difficulties. There are some important comments that I cite here: 

Could you explain why you need to perform this Procrustean feat of
  shoehorning a five-point response into a four-point scale?

– whuber

Regardless of the size of the customer, if they ask you to do
  something that cannot be justified or is outright wrong, the right
  response is not just to do it anyway! We all have (or have had)
  customers and bosses like that. As good consultants and employees we
  should seek to understand their needs and find solutions that are
  technically and ethically correct. Sometimes that means offering a
  creative alternative, perhaps by reinterpreting the request or finding
  a better solution. In this case you might begin by finding out the
  purpose behind the collapsed scale and its intended interpretation. 

Apart from this, maybe you could try to avoid the problem with an analysis that in principle do not depend to much on how many Likert levels, such as ordinal regression.  You could also present different analysis and how conclusions differ, with some simulations ... 
The comments after the answer by@NuclAcc  indicates financial interests in analysis results differ between interested parties. In that case, maybe even a court case is a possibility, and you want an analysis that you can defend in court.
– whuber
