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This study aims to investigate the psychological mechanisms underlying hospitality employees’ social exchange relationships at work by applying the social aspects of work and the social exchange theory.

MTurk was used for conducting a cross-sectional questionnaire survey, targeting frontline employees who were working in full-service restaurants. Descriptive statistic, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were performed.

Customer-employee exchange had a positive relationship with gratitude. Moreover, gratitude was positively associated with both role-prescribed customer service and extra-role customer service. Leader-member exchange and coworker exchange were positively related to obligation. Obligation had positive association with both role-prescribed customer service and extra-role customer service. The mediating effects of gratitude and obligation were statistically significant.

Employees’ social exchange relationship with customers promotes prosocial behaviors by arousing gratitude in them. Moreover, their social exchange relationships with supervisors and coworkers lead to prosocial behaviors by provoking obligation from them.

This research shows the importance of the social aspects of work to contribute to employees’ prosocial behavior in the hospitality industry. Moreover, it proves the critical roles of emotions to guide employees’ decisions about social exchange.

Drawing on social exchange theory, this study aims to investigate the relation of customer sexual harassment (CSH) and customer-oriented organizational citizenship behaviors (customer-oriented OCB), as well as the mediation of customer–employee exchange (CEX) and the moderation of hostile attribution bias.

The hypotheses were examined through a field study performed in six hotels in three Chinese cities and an experimental study.

The results revealed that CSH undermined the quality of CEX, leading employees to withdraw from customer-oriented OCB. Additionally, the hostile attribution bias of service employees reinforced the direct relationship between CSH and CEX and its indirect relationship with customer-oriented OCB via CEX.

The findings suggest that hospitality organizations should endeavor to reduce the occurrence of CSH, and that by valuing and encouraging the development of high-quality CEX, they can mitigate its detrimental effects. Special attention should also be paid to hospitality employees holding strong hostile attribution bias.

First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to explore the influence of CSH on customer-oriented OCB among hotel employees. In addition, examining the effect of CSH from the social exchange perspective represents a new theoretical approach. The finding also contributes to the literature on CEX by identifying an important antecedent. Finally, by investigating hostile attribution bias as a moderator, this research provides insights into how individual differences moderate the destructive influence of CSH.

This study aims to investigate the significant role of restaurant employees’ relational resources to promote thriving at work. The mediating effect of heedful relating was focused on as an underlying mechanism. This study also investigated the moderating effect of employees’ perceived COVID-19 impact on the hypothesized relationships.

The research model was tested with frontline restaurant employees working in full-service restaurants using the convenience sampling method. A self-administered questionnaire was used for an online survey. A total of 361 responses were analyzed with structural equation modeling, bootstrapping analysis and multi-group analysis.

The results showed the significant relationships not only between relational resources and thriving at work but also between relational resources and heedful relating. Heedful relating was significantly associated with thriving at work. The significant mediating effect of heedful relating was supported. The moderating effect of the perceived COVID-19 impact on the association between leader–member exchange and thriving was significant.

Employees’ relational resources at work leads to thriving at work both directly and indirectly through the impact of heedful relating. The findings contributed to the literature on human resource management and hospitality. Moreover, the study presented implications for the restaurant industry to promote employees’ self-adaptation and development in a post-pandemic era.

With the study findings, the importance of relational aspects to foster restaurant employees’ thriving at work could be highlighted which reflects the unique nature of the restaurant industry.

Guided by the affect theory of social exchange, this study aims to examine the affective process underlying the impact of customer cooperation on hotel frontline employees’ prosocial service behavior. Job autonomy was tested as a boundary condition.

A mix-mode quantitative survey collected data from 818 frontline employees in 14 upscale hotels across China. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling to test the research hypotheses.

Results suggest that customer cooperation influences employees’ prosocial service behavior directly and indirectly via employees’ positive affect. Contrary to expectations, job autonomy weakened the relationships among customer cooperation, positive affect and employees’ extra-role customer service but did not moderate the impacts of customer cooperation and positive affect on employees’ role-prescribed customer service.

As an initial attempt to investigate the effects of customer cooperation on two types of frontline employees’ prosocial behavior, this study broadens the application of the affect theory of social exchange and contributes to an understanding of the theory’s boundary conditions by testing a framework under the contextual condition of job autonomy.

This paper aims to investigate the influence of customer participation in services on the innovative behaviors of employees. Although previous studies have acknowledged the importance of customers in service innovation and investigated how customer participation in product development teams affect innovation, the effect of mandatory customer participation in services on the employee innovative behavior has not been examined. In addition to addressing such gap, this study proposed the mediating role of interpersonal trust in the relationship between customer participation and employee innovative behavior and then tested the hypotheses in a restaurant context.

A total of 514 valid questionnaires were collected from frontline employees or entry-level managers in 25 well-known restaurants (including 14 hotels and 11 freestanding restaurants) in Beijing, China. The relationships among customer participation, interpersonal trust and employee innovative behavior were examined using structural models analyzed in AMOS 20.0.

The structural equation modeling results indicate that customers’ information and emotional participation in services significantly influence the innovative behavior of employees, whereas behavioral participation does not. In addition, a high level of interpersonal trust between customers and employees may increase employee innovative behaviors. Moreover, unlike cognitive trust, affective trust mediates the relationship between customer information or emotional participation and employee innovative behavior.

Findings indicate that service firms can encourage customers to participate actively in service co-creation; their participation in terms of information is encouraged to foster employee innovative behaviors by training employees and establishing an appropriate climate for information exchange. Moreover, service firms must pay attention to the emotions of customers during the service processes. Furthermore, the affective trust between customers and employees is significant to service firms, which need to take measures for employees to manage their relationships with customers well.

Based on the concepts of service marketing and organizational behavior, this study contributes to the research on customer–employee co-production and employee innovative behavior from an interdisciplinary perspective. The study reveals the influencing mechanism of customer participation on employee innovative behavior and contributes to the research on customer–employee interpersonal trust. Previous studies emphasized the importance of trust among work group members in innovation, while this study supports the association between customer–employee interpersonal trust and employee innovative behaviors.

This study aims to examine the observing customer’s reactions, namely, gratitude, loyalty to the employee and tipping intention while observing other customer incivility during another customer service failure and the frontline employee’s emotional labor strategy.

A 2 (emotional labor strategy: deep acting vs surface acting) by 2 (service consumption criticality: high vs low) experiment is used to test the hypotheses.

The results reveal that observing an employee’s deep acting emotional labor (vs surface acting) leads to a greater level of gratitude among the affected customers and promotes their tipping and loyalty to the employee. However, there is no significant interaction effect of service consumption criticality and emotional labor strategy on customer gratitude.

This research builds upon the social servicescape, customer misbehavior and emotional labor literature by examining previously untested relationships.

In cases of other customer service failure, managers should effectively communicate to their employees how their emotional labor induces positive customer feedback. Currently, emotional labor is emphasized mostly regarding its negative effects on employees, but this research suggests that serving the recovery expectation of the affected customers, especially when it is served with authentic emotional displays, can promote increased tipping and loyalty behavior.

No research investigates customers’ emotional and behavioral reactions to employee emotional labor in the context of other customer service failure.

Different from the previous organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) literature, this study aims to propose an OCB-O (organizational citizenship behavior toward organizations) and OCB-I (organizational citizenship behavior toward individual coworkers) driven mechanism for the formation of OCB-C (organizational citizenship behavior toward customers). Based on the social exchange and agency theories, the authors propose that perceived leadership support and work autonomy contribute to both OCB-I and OCB-O, which contributes to proactive and reactive customer service attitude as well as OCB-C.

A three-wave survey was conducted in five-star hotels in Mainland China, and a sample of 410 hotel frontline employees was used to test the model.

Findings of the study suggested that perceived leadership support positively led to OCB-O and OCB-I while work autonomy led to OCB-I, demonstrating the importance of employees’ perceived leadership support on motivating employees to perform OCB-I and OCB-O. OCB-I and OCB-O directly improved OCB-C, confirming the proposed spillover effect from OCB-I and OCB-O to OCB-C. OCB-I supported both proactive and reactive customer service attitudes, revealing OCB-I as more effective than OCB-O on influencing employees’ service attitudes. Furthermore, OCB-I, OCB-O and proactive customer service attitude lead to OCB-C.

This study suggests that it is important for leaders to show care and support to employees and design jobs with a certain level of flexibility, so that employees are motivated to go the extra mile to do a good job. When employees make helping others a habit, they will provide more genuine care to customers and do a better job in serving customers.

This study supports the spillover mechanism of OCB-I and OCB-O on OCB-C. Specifically, the spillover mechanism starts from a workplace-driven model with employees’ perceived leadership support and work autonomy to enhance OCB-O as well as OCB-I. Then, spillover effects stem directly from OCB-I and OCB-O to OCB-C and indirectly to proactive customer service attitude.

This study aims to explore the extent to which internal marketing influences employees’ perceived ability to deliver service quality in the Islamic banking industry in Oman. Additionally, the influence of perceived service quality on perceived customer satisfaction is established.

Data was obtained from retail banking branch employees at the customer front line of Islamic banks in Oman using electronic and person-administered surveys, and 272 responses were deemed suitable for data analysis. The measurement and structural models were measured through structural equation modelling.

The findings show that internal promotion, internal process and internal purpose are enablers of employees’ perceived ability to deliver service quality in the Islamic banking industry of Oman. In addition, service quality was found to have a strong positive influence on perceived customer satisfaction in Islamic banks.

This study demonstrates that internal product, internal price, internal promotion, internal process and internal purpose are influencers of service quality, and the latter has a direct relationship with perceived customer satisfaction in Islamic banking.

The findings can guide the Islamic banking sector in Oman on how internal marketing can foster service quality, ultimately leading to positive perceived customer satisfaction experiences.

The internal marketing mix model is predominately a Western model, which has been tested primarily in mature Western markets. This study reflects on ten internal marketing mix elements, which have been tested for the enablement of service quality and perceived customer satisfaction in Oman.

Relational uncertainty determines how relationships develop because it enables the building of trust and commitment. However, relational uncertainty has not been explored in an inter-organisational setting. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how organisations experience relational uncertainty in service dyads and how they resolve it through suitable organisational responses to increase the level of service quality.

The author applies the overall logic of organisational information-processing theory and presents empirical insights from two industrial case studies collected via semi-structured interviews and secondary data.

The findings suggest that relational uncertainty is caused by the partner’s unresolved organisational uncertainty, i.e. their lacking capabilities to deliver or receive (parts of) the service. Furthermore, the author found that resolving the relational uncertainty increased the functional quality while resolving the partner’s organisational uncertainty increased the technical quality of the delivered service.

The author makes two contributions: first,the author introduces relational uncertainty to the OM literature as the inability to predict and explain the actions of a partnering organisation due to a lack of knowledge about their abilities and intentions; and second, the author presents suitable organisational responses to relational uncertainty and their effect on service quality.

This study aims to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature on employee innovative behavior (EIB) in services. Based on the review, the conceptualization and operationalization of EIB are summarized, and the relationships between job characteristics and EIB are revealed.

Altogether, 143 papers examining EIB in services published in 56 journals, including top management and hospitality journals, during the period of 1995-2014 were reviewed.

Three approaches to examine EIB in services have been identified. The concept of EIB based on the reviewed papers is summarized. In addition, antecedents and consequences of EIB are reviewed. In particular, the role of job characteristics in EIB is discussed.

This study provides practitioners with a “one-stop” paper to enhance their understanding of the relationship among EIB, job characteristics and other relevant concepts. Implications for hospitality firms on stimulating the innovative behaviors of employees are also provided.

Owing to the particularity and importance of EIB in services, this review summarizes the current knowledge on this concept and its antecedents and provides directions for future research, especially on the relationship between job characteristics and EIB.