PurposePrior studies have mainly attributed customer incivility to dispositional characteristics, whereas little attention has been paid to exploring service employees' role in triggering or reducing customer incivility. The purpose of the present study is to propose and test a model in which service employees' emotional labor strategies affect customer incivility via influencing customers' self-esteem threat, as well as examine the moderating role of customer's perception of service climate.Design/methodology/approachBased on a matched sample consisting of 317 employee-customer dyads in China, multiple regression analysis and indirect effect tests were employed to test our model.FindingsThe study shows that employee surface acting is positively related to customer incivility, whereas deep acting is negatively associated with customer incivility. Moreover, customer self-esteem threat mediates the relationship between both types of emotional labor and customer incivility. Customer perception of service climate moderates the relationship between deep acting and customer self-esteem threat.Originality/valueThe current research broadens the antecedents of customer incivility from the employee perspective and sheds more light on the role of customer self-esteem in the interactions between employees and customers. It also demonstrates a complementary relationship between service climate and individual employees' emotional labor strategies, thereby expanding the existing understanding of the management of employees' emotional labor.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the phenomenon of knowledge transfer between employees and coworkers. That is, when and why employees engage in knowledge seeking or knowledge sabotage when confronted with coworkers with higher relative overqualification. Design/methodology/approach This study collected survey data from 315 employee-coworker pairs in East China at three-time points. Findings The results showed that when the cooperative goal interdependence between employee and coworker is high, the perception of coworker’s relative overqualification will cause benign envy of employees, which in turn promote employees to engage in knowledge seeking from coworker. However, when the competitive goal interdependence between employee and coworker is high, the perception of coworker’s relative overqualification will cause malicious envy of employees, which in turn promote employees to engage in knowledge sabotage toward coworker. Originality/value This research not only expands the theoretical perspective and outcomes of relative overqualification but also enriches the mechanism of knowledge seeking and knowledge sabotage. Meanwhile, this study also provides practical guidance for enterprises to reduce knowledge sabotage.

Narcissism is a personality trait characterized by an inflated self-image, a strong sense of psychological superiority and entitlement, and a low level of empathy. As narcissism has a substantial impact on employees' work quality, happiness, satisfaction, and interpersonal relationships, employee narcissism has become an important topic of research among scholars and management practitioners, who have called for further research on the behavior of narcissistic employees in the process of interpersonal interaction. However, research on the impact of employee narcissism on prosocial behavior has reached inconsistent conclusions; thus, the mechanisms by which employee narcissism affects prosocial behavior need to be further explored. To fill this

PurposeThis study aims to advance the bottom-line mentality (BLM) literature by drawing on goal-setting theory to examine the positive effects of supervisor BLM on employees' behavior.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected survey data from 291 full-time employees from various Chinese organizations at three different points in time.FindingsThe authors found that supervisor BLM and employees' collectivism orientation interacted to influence employees' bottom-line goal commitment such that the positive relationship between supervisor BLM and employees' bottom-line goal commitment was stronger when employees' collectivism orientation was high rather than low. Furthermore, they found that employees' collectivism orientation moderated the positive indirect effects of supervisor BLM on employees' work effort and helping behavior via bottom-line goal commitment such that the indirect effects were stronger when employees had a high rather than a low collectivism orientation.Originality/valueThe authors explored the “bridge side” of supervisor BLM on employees' behavior, especially after being moderated by collectivism orientation. Our results can help managers develop a comprehensive understanding of BLM.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between visionary leadership and taking charge. The authors also aim to test the mediating effects of employee inclusion of leader in self and the moderating effects of future orientation. Methods This paper tests the theoretical model across a multisource, time-lagged field study with 234 leader-follower dyads as data. SPSS 25.0, PROCESS 3.4 macro and Mplus8.3 were used to test the theoretical hypotheses. Results We found that visionary leadership stimulates followers to include leaders in self, which in turn enhances their taking charge. Additionally, the relationship between visionary leadership and follower include of leader in self is strengthened by followers’ future orientation. Furthermore, the mediation effect of follower include leader in self between visionary leadership and followers’ taking charge is established only when followers’ future orientation is high. Conclusion Based on self-expansion theory, this study explained how and when the effectiveness of visionary leadership may be optimized from a follower-centric perspective. These results contribute to the visionary leadership and self-expansion literature by introducing inclusion of leader in self as an underlying mechanism and future orientation as a boundary condition.