Servant leadership and organizational citizenship behavior

Abstract

<jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title> <jats:p>This paper aims to process underlying the relationship between supervisor servant leadership and employee organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in hotels. Specifically, it analyzes the mediating role of empathy – individual level – and service climate – group level – in the relationship between supervisor servant leadership and employee OCB.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title> <jats:p>The empirical analysis uses original data on hotels located in historic cities in Spain. A survey provided a sample of 343 work-group-level (supervisors) and 835 individual-level (employee) from a sample of 171 hotels.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title> <jats:p>The most interesting finding is the indirect effect of supervisor servant leadership on employee OCB through the mediating role of both employee empathy – individual level – and group service climate – group level.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Practical implications</jats:title> <jats:p>The findings suggest that hotel supervisors should adopt servant leadership to enhance OCB in their workgroups. This paper also provides insights into other ways to increase employee OCB, namely, through human resources initiatives that enhance employee empathy and shape a service climate within groups.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title> <jats:p>This paper is one of the few that analyzes the relationships between supervisor servant leadership, employee empathy, group service climate and employee OCB in a unifying cross-level model. It is also the first to analyze employee empathy as a positive outcome of supervisor servant leadership, as well as a mechanism to explain the relationship between servant leadership and employee OCB. Finally, it is one of the few studies that analyzes all these relationships in conjunction within the hospitality industry.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Can servant leadership prevent hotel employee depression during the COVID-19 pandemic? A mediating and multigroup analysis

“…For example, high quality leader-member and team-member exchanges (e.g., LMX, TMX) are direct outcomes in groups led by servant leaders ( Eva et al., 2019 ), which could leverage the creation of bonding PSC. Furthermore, the greater likelihood of the supervisees of these leaders becoming servant and empathetic ( Ruiz-Palomino and Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara, 2020 ; Elche et al., 2020 ) would make them reliable enough to attract others who wish to build social relationships with them. Thus, future research could evaluate the extent to which LMX or TMX or changes in supervisee behavior (i.e., servant behavior, empathy, sense of building community) could drive them to become more active in initiating and holding social relationships with which to build PSC.…”

How exploitative leadership influences on knowledge management processes: the moderating role of organisational citizenship behaviour

“…Such behaviours of "self-interest fostering" are related to various structures of destructive leadership, including pseudo-transformational, personalised charismatic and despotic leadership (Aravena, 2017;Burns, 2017;Schmid et al, 2014). These behaviours differ from the concepts and behaviours of servant leadership in the workplace, which turns leaders into instructors and mentors to their subordinates who help IJOA 29,3 them achieve their goals of developing, learning and innovation (Elche et al, 2020). An example of such behaviour is the use of the workplace by the leader as a conducive environment for subordinates to try different KM approaches without worrying about being punished for any bad results (Atapattu and Ranawake, 2017).…”

“…In organisations, OCB is a critical and essential voluntary social behaviour in supporting leaders to achieve their goals, thereby supporting their vision to improve organisational performance (Pio and Lengkong, 2020). Subordinates with high OCB provide comfort to positive leaders, help them manage critical situations in the workplace, provide increased value to leaders in resource management and reduce their workload to achieve organisational success (Elche et al, 2020).…”

The relation of servant leadership with followers' organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB): mediating role of generalized self-efficacy (GSE) and organization–based self-esteem (OBSE)

“…There is much emphasis on transcending one's self-interest towards followers' interest (Sendjaya et al, 2008;Graham, 1991) through creating a ubiquitous social context which will have a positive effect on employee's attitude (Walumbwa et al, 2010). Servant leaders want the followers to be organizational citizens (Thao and Kang, 2020) through which they can foster followers' OCB (Elche et al, 2020;Newman et al, 2017;Stone et al,2004;Russell, 2001;Podsakoff et al, 2000;Greenleaf, 1997;Smith et al,1983).…”