Authentic leadership’s effect on customer orientation and turnover intention among Portuguese hospitality employees

Abstract

<jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title> <jats:p>Hospitality employees’ attitudes and behaviors play a crucial role in enhancing customer satisfaction and service quality and ultimately firms’ success; therefore, organizations must have skilled, customer-oriented staff. More research is required to help hospitality managers gain insights into the best strategies to promote and retain customer-oriented employees. This study specifically sought to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the ways that authentic leadership (AL) can affect employees’ customer orientation and turnover intention, including exploring affective commitment’s (AC) potential mediating role.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title> <jats:p>The sample included 350 employees from different hospitality organizations in Portugal. Data were collected using anonymously completed structured questionnaires available online or in a paper-and-pencil format.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title> <jats:p>The results demonstrate that AL has a positive effect on customer orientation and a negative effect on turnover intention. Moreover, they indicate that AC mediates the relationships between AL and both customer orientation and turnover intention. All hypotheses received empirical support.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Practical implications</jats:title> <jats:p>Hotel managers can increase employees’ AC and customer orientation by engaging in AL behaviors. Similarly, management can avoid having employees voluntarily leave their jobs using more AL styles and strengthening employees’ affective bonds to their organization.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title> <jats:p>Prior hospitality studies have rarely focused on AL. This study is the first to analyze AL’s effect on customer orientation and AC’s role as a mediator variable in the relationships between AL and customer orientation and turnover intention, thus integrating all these variables into a single research model.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Abusive Supervision, Affective Commitment, Customer Orientation, and Proactive Customer Service Performance: Evidence From Hotel Employees in China

“…Affective commitment, as a kind of work attitude, positively promotes employees to make positive work behaviors under judgment-driven behavior. This finding is also in line with those of previous studies that have asserted that employees with higher affective commitment tend to be more customer-oriented (Lombardi et al, 2019;Ribeiro et al, 2020). Customer satisfaction is the key to the sustainable development of service enterprises.…”

“…This study extends prior study on this issue. Consistent with the self-regulation view of Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1991), employees with high customer orientation have good expectations of service performance (Gazzoli et al, 2012;Ribeiro et al, 2020), and they would therefore self-regulate their service behavior and improve PCSP to obtain better service performance.…”

“…Previous studies have found that an employee gains a positive sense of belonging and selfworth through affective commitment (He et al, 2011), thereby enhancing their sense of identity with organizational goals and values and their organizational loyalty (Joshi and Randall, 2001), which can effectively motivate employees to engage in behaviors that are beneficial to achieving organizational goals, such as customer-oriented behaviors in order to improve customer satisfaction (Noor et al, 2012;Lombardi et al, 2019). On the other hand, studies have found that the higher employees' affective commitment, the higher job satisfaction they have (Joshi and Randall, 2001;Ribeiro et al, 2020), and employees with higher levels of job satisfaction are more committed to customer service, more inclined to enjoy the process of serving customers and meet customer needs more fully (Donavan et al, 2004), and more likely to be customer-oriented (Ahmad and Lim, 2015). In short, affective commitment has a positive effect on employees' customer orientation (Ribeiro et al, 2020).…”

“…On the other hand, studies have found that the higher employees' affective commitment, the higher job satisfaction they have (Joshi and Randall, 2001;Ribeiro et al, 2020), and employees with higher levels of job satisfaction are more committed to customer service, more inclined to enjoy the process of serving customers and meet customer needs more fully (Donavan et al, 2004), and more likely to be customer-oriented (Ahmad and Lim, 2015). In short, affective commitment has a positive effect on employees' customer orientation (Ribeiro et al, 2020). Therefore, we can propose the following hypothesis.…”

Guest editorial

“…In the fourth paper titled "Authentic leadership's effect on customer orientation and turnover intention among Portuguese hospitality employees: the mediating role of affective commitment," Ribeiro et al (2020) collected data from 350 hospitality employees (from various hospitality organizations) in Portugal and found that affective commitment mediated the relationships between authentic leadership and both customer orientation and turnover intention. In the fifth paper titled "Authentic leadership and career satisfaction: The meditating role of thriving and conditional effect of psychological contract fulfilment," Chang et al (2020) examined the mediating effect of learning and vitality (two dimensions of thriving) between authentic leadership and career satisfaction.…”