How Servant Leadership Leads to Employees’ Customer-Oriented Behavior in the Service Industry? A Dual-Mechanism Model

Abstract

Although servant leadership has been acknowledged as an important predictor of employees’ behavioral outcomes in the service industry, there is still no cohesive understanding of the positive association between servant leadership and employees’ customer-oriented behavior (COB). This research, drawing on cognitive affective processing system theory (CAPS), empirically investigates the influence of servant leadership on employees’ COB by exploring two mediators (i.e., organizational identification and vitality). We conducted two studies in China, using a cross-sectional design to survey employees in service-oriented technical organizations (Study 1) and a time-lagged design to survey hospitality employees with frontline service jobs in star-level hotels (Study 2). Across both samples, we found that servant leadership enhanced employees’ COB by simultaneously increasing their organizational identification and vitality. We discuss the implications of these results for future research and practice.

Developing sustainable workplace through leadership: Perspectives of transformational leadership and of organizational citizenship behavior

“…In short, OCB is an act that can be initiated voluntarily by an individual without the request of others or organizations and may affect customer satisfaction by acting in a manner that maximizes the interests of the organization. Many OCB studies have found that it could make a special contribution to the organization and has a significant contribution to the improvement of the quality of the organization's service (Yuan et al, 2020 ). Through the OCB presentation, employees could provide higher quality service that exceed the formal expectation of their organization (Hongbo et al, 2021 ).…”

Impacts of emotional regulation, adaptive selling and customer-oriented behavior on sales performance: the moderating role of job resourcefulness

“…Customer-oriented behavior measures how salespeople use customer-oriented services to satisfy their customers. The 12-item scale was developed by Elsamen and Akroush (2018), Kaynak et al (2016), Nart et al (2019), Singh and Venugopal (2015) and Yuan et al (2020).…”

Hubungan Kepemimpinan Melayani Terhadap Perilaku OCB dengan Pemberdayaan Pekerja dan Interaksi Atasan Bawahan Sebagai Pemediasi serta Gender Sebagai Pemoderasi

“…Karyawan yang memiliki OCB yang baik akan sangat membantu perusahaan dalam mencapai tujuan. Menurut Amir & Santoso (2019) dan Yuan et al (2020), perilaku OCB karyawan yang minim adalah akibat dari berbagai anteseden terkait dengan rasa percaya terhadap atasan, tingkat kepuasan kerja, beban kerja yang dijalani, persepsi terhadap tugas dan pekerjaannya dan berbagai masalah personal yang melingkupinya. Di perusahaan, tidak semua karyawan memiliki perilaku OCB yang kontributif dan jika pun ada, tingkat OCB karyawan berbeda-beda.…”

“…Kepemimpinan melayani adalah pemimpin yang mengutamakan kebutuhan orang lain, aspirasi, dan kepentingan orang lain atas mereka sendiri (Sendjaya & Sarros, 2002). Implementasi kepemimpinan melayani secara signifikan berdampak positif terhadap perilaku berorientasi pelanggan dari para karyawan (Amir & Santoso, 2019), demikian pula di industri jasa (Yuan et al, 2020). Penelitian yang dilakukan oleh Kiker et al (2019) menyatakan bahwa gender merupakan pemoderasi antara kepemimpinan melayani dan OCB.…”