Servant leadership and organizational citizenship behavior: The mediating effect of empathy and service climate

Abstract

Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

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.

Findings

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.

Practical implications

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.

Originality/value

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.

Citation

Elche, D., Ruiz-Palomino, P. and Linuesa-Langreo, J. (2020), "Servant leadership and organizational citizenship behavior: The mediating effect of empathy and service climate", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 32 No. 6, pp. 2035-2053. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-05-2019-0501