Servant leadership and proactive customer service performance
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management
ISSN: 0959-6119
Article publication date: 12 February 2019
Issue publication date: 30 April 2019
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of servant leadership on hospitality employees’ proactive customer service performance (PCSP) by focusing on the sequential mediating roles of harmonious passion and customer orientation and the moderating role of others’ approval of contingent self-esteem.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses structural equation modeling with the four-wave data collected from eight Chinese hotels.
Findings
This study finds that servant leadership can promote hospitality employees’ PCSP by sequentially boosting their harmonious passion for work and customer orientation. Moreover, others’ approval of contingent self-esteem strengthens servant leadership’s effect on harmonious passion for work.
Originality/value
First, this study extends the servant leadership research by extending its outcome to hospitality employees’ PCSP. Second, this study enriches the understanding of the mediating mechanism between servant leadership and PCSP. Third, this study advances the research on servant leadership by identifying the moderating effect of employees’ others’ approval of contingent self-esteem between servant leadership and harmonious passion.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the support provided by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71472116).
Citation
Ye, Y., Lyu, Y. and He, Y. (2019), "Servant leadership and proactive customer service performance", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 1330-1347. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-03-2018-0180
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited