When and why does relative leader-member exchange enhance service performance?

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to examine the mediating roles of self-efficacy and team commitment in linking service employees’ relative leader-member exchange (RLMX) with customer service behaviors and also the moderating roles of team-level differentiations in leader-member exchange (LMX) and team-member exchange (TMX) in influencing these mediation processes. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 467 customer-contact employees working in hotel restaurants. Hierarchical linear modeling analysis was used to test the mediation hypotheses, and moderated path was used to assess the moderated mediation. Findings Self-efficacy and team-commitment both mediated the relationship between RLMX and customer service behaviors. The differentiations in LMX and TMX significantly interacted with RLMX in predicting self-efficacy and team commitment and also moderated the indirect effects of RLMX on customer service behaviors. Research limitations/implications Future studies need to incorporate customers’ or immediate supervisors’ ratings of subordinates’ customer service behaviors and replicate the findings in different countries and work settings. Practical implications Hospitality managers should foster a work environment wherein they develop equal quality relationships with their subordinates in a workgroup and promote high-quality relationships among subordinates in the workgroup to improve subordinates’ self-efficacy, team commitment and, subsequently, their customer service behaviors. Originality/value This study incorporates both self-efficacy and team commitment as motivation-based and social exchange-based mediators, respectively, in predicting customer service behavior. It also extends the boundary condition for the mediations by considering the team-level differentiations in both vertical exchange (LMX) and horizontal exchange (TMX).

Well-being and career change intention: COVID-19’s impact on unemployed and furloughed hospitality workers

“…More importantly, personal control often serves as a buffer against stressors or negative life events, and thus, the research has shown that individuals with higher levels of personal control have fewer health problems and higher levels of wellbeing when encountering a crisis (Greenaway et al, 2015). Further still, ample studies have demonstrated similar results in the hospitality workplace (Wang et al, 2020;Xu et al, 2020;Yoon and Yoon, 2019).…”

“…Finally, this study examined the mediating role of personal control in the proposed model and further operationalized the psychological sense of personal control as self-efficacy. Several similar concepts, such as self-esteem or psychological capital, have frequently been used to examine the individual differences when coping with stressful working environments in hospitality (Wang et al, 2020;Xu et al, 2020;Yoon and Yoon, 2019) or adverse life events (Price et al, 2002;Romppel et al, 2013). The study results showed that possessing high personal control qualities can help buffer adverse outcomes, which is consistent with previous studies.…”

What matters for employees’ daily interpersonal behaviors?

“…This helps them gain positive feedback from others and thus maintain their level of self-esteem (Wang et al, 2020), which may make them less motivated to engage in behaviors that will harm interpersonal harmony. LMX helps in the maintenance of one's self-image by providing support and resources (Yoon and Yoon, 2019), consequently mitigating the relationship between daily self-esteem and daily interpersonal harmony. Therefore, the influence of low LMX may be stronger than that of high LMX on the relationship between daily self-esteem and daily interpersonal harmony.…”

Influence of informal institutions on commitment to customer service in Confucian Asia

“…The importance of social network ties increases CCS not only directly (H7, β 5 0.323, p 5 0.014), but also indirectly via its significant effect on openness to change (H6, β 5 0.247, p 5 0.040). In this context, we see a strong relationship with the discussion about team commitment and its mediating effect between leader-membership exchange and customer service, which has lately been published by Yoon and Yoon (2019).…”

“…In this context, Cheung and To (2010) state that employees' involvement plays an important mediating role between the management commitment to service quality and its organizational output in terms of customer perception of service performance. Also, He et al (2001) find that service climate improves customer satisfaction, which is mediated by employee commitment (see also Garg and Dhar, 2016;Jauhari et al, 2017), and Yoon and Yoon (2019) focus on team commitment and self-efficacy in the context of enhancing service performance. Finally, Lau et al (2017) argue that the ethical work climate significantly enhances the employees' affective commitment and proactive customer service performance.…”