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This study aims to examine the influence of paradoxical leadership (PLSH) on the extra-role service behavior of frontline employees. It analyzes not only direct but also indirect influence through mechanisms that improve the learning (self-improvement) and communication (voice) capabilities of hospitality employees.

Data were gathered through structured questionnaires administered to a sample of frontline employees from Spanish hotels. A structural equations model was used to evaluate the theoretical model proposed.

The results show both a direct positive effect of PLSH on extra-role service and a mediating effect of employees’ improvement-oriented behaviors on this relationship. These results support the idea that employees under paradoxical leaders seek both self-improvement and organizational improvement through their voice to provide guests with excellent service.

The findings extend understanding of PLSH’s effects on the hospitality industry through its impact on extra-role service, an essential element of hotel success.

This study addresses the lack of research on hospitality leadership by analyzing the effects of PLSH on employees’ communication and learning behaviors, as well as on their extra-role service. The authors argue that some behaviors that help hotels compete (e.g. extra-role service) can have paradoxical implications for employees.

Frontline employees (FLEs) play a pivotal role in service delivery. Beyond their expected in-role behaviors, FLEs often have to perform extra-role behaviors such as providing additional help to customers. The purpose of this study is to investigate how customers’ power distance belief (PDB) influences their perceptions of FLEs’ warmth and competence when FLEs perform extra-role helping behaviors.

Four experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. The first three experiments used a one factor two-level (PDB: low vs high) between-participants design. The fourth one used a 2 (PDB: low vs high) × 2 (firm reputation: low vs high) between-participants design.

The results indicate that, compared to high-PDB customers, low-PDB customers perceive greater warmth in FLEs’ extra-role helping behaviors but no significant difference in FLEs’ perceived competence. Importantly, these effects are mediated by customer gratitude. Moreover, these effects are moderated by firm reputation such that customers’ perceptions of FLEs’ warmth and competence are both enhanced when the firm has a favorable reputation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is the first to identify the differential effects of PDB on customer perceptions of FLEs’ warmth and competence in the context of FLEs’ extra-role helping behaviors and to reveal the mediating role of gratitude. These findings contribute to the literatures on FLEs’ extra-role behaviors and social perceptions of both warmth and competence.

Service research has highlighted the role of emotional labor in service delivery but has neglected service employees’ actions. This study aims to distinguish between the recurrent in-role and extra-role actions of service employees and to examine the joint effect of service employees’ actions and their emotional labor, which may color these actions on customer buying behavior (number of purchased items and total bill).

Phase I comprised two studies: Study 1 examined 70 service interaction videos to identify employees’ service actions, and Study 2 quantitatively validated the most frequent employee actions, used for further study, by examining 40 employee–customer interactions in fashion stores. For Phase II, Study 3 derived data from 60 service employees’ diaries to predict the joint effect of performed emotional labor and service actions on customer buying behavior.

Findings revealed that emotional labor moderated the relationship between service actions and customer buying behavior. The relationship between in-role/extra-role actions and buying behavior was stronger in the lower surface-acting (less emotional faking) condition, whereas the relationship between in-role/extra-role actions and buying behavior was stronger for the higher deep-acting (more emotionally authentic) condition.

Service organizations should not limit training to the more easily attained service actions. This possibility may be lacking if it ignores the emotional component that accompanied the action. This may shift the focus from customer satisfaction to customer delight.

This study is a pioneering effort to examine the specific circumstances in which service employees’ actions (regardless of in-role or extra-role status) will not produce the desired customer-related outcome in the presence of emotional labor.

Drawing on and extending the socially embedded model of thriving, this paper aims to investigate how and when customer participation promotes hospitality frontline employees’ engagement in extra-role service behavior.

A two-wave questionnaire survey was carried out among frontline service employees and their immediate supervisors in a four-star business hotel in Eastern China. Path analysis using Mplus 8.3 examined a multilevel moderated mediation model.

Customer participation has a positive effect on frontline employees’ experience of thriving, which in turn promotes their engagement in extra-role service behavior. Nevertheless, supervisors’ negative affect weakens the positive effect of customer participation.

Hotels could implement employee assistance programs, arrange training on emotional regulation and positive psychology and create a fun work environment to help alleviate supervisors’ experience of negative affect so as to lessen its adverse effect on frontline employees’ perception of customer participation.

First, this work is one of the few studies exploring how customer participation affects frontline employees’ well-being (in terms of thriving) and extra-role service behavior, which advances extant value co-creation literature. Second, the moderating role of supervisors’ negative affect enriches the limited understanding of when customer participation might not bring firm benefits. Third, by uncovering customer participation as an antecedent of employee thriving, this study extends thriving research that only attends to contexts located within organizations.

This paper aims to explore front line employee performance in retail banking and presents distinct components of employee performance, including extra‐role and sabotage behaviours.

Data was collected from Irish bank employees. Usable responses were received from 404 respondents and subjected to exploratory factor analysis. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to undertake a confirmatory factor analysis of the emergent five‐factor model.

Results indicate front line employee performance is multi‐faceted and comprised of civility, assurance and reliability, customer orientation, as well as extra‐role behaviour and anti‐role behaviour, or sabotage.

This exploratory study focuses on the Irish banking sector. To explore the generalisabilty of results, replication studies among other samples of branch banking employees in other countries are in order. Moreover, our survey is limited to the views of branch employees. We advocate research among bank managers and customers to triangulate potentially divergent views about performance.

Findings have implications for recruitment, training and rewards. To ensure new hires are service minded, managers must consider their potential for extra‐role or sabotage behaviour. Employees who demonstrate extra‐role behaviours must be rewarded to encourage the adoption of such behaviours. Managers must also seek to minimise job stress in order to curtail anti‐role behaviours.

This paper offers insights into employees' views about their own performance at the front line. It extends the conceptualisation of service quality, by considering extra‐role behaviour and sabotage as components of employee performance.

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.

Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to explore how perceived organizational exploitation affects hospitality employees’ extra-role customer service behaviors by investigating the mediating role of depressed mood at work and the moderating role of reappraisal.

This study tested all of the hypotheses using multilevel path analyses with a sample of 340 supervisor–subordinate dyads.

The results show that perceived organizational exploitation is indirectly associated with hospitality employees’ extra-role customer service through depressed mood at work and that employees’ reappraisal may help mitigate the negative effect of organizational exploitation.

First, policies and rules should be established in advance to prevent organizational exploitation. Second, we suggest that hospitality organizations should pay special attention to employees who have low levels of reappraisal, and reappraisal training could be provided to enhance their emotion regulation skills. Third, hospitality organizations could nurture a healthy and supportive emotional climate to create positive emotions in the workplace, in case that depressed mood at work contributes to employees’ extra-role behaviors.

First, the authors go beyond previous studies to focus on a new behavioral outcome of perceived organizational exploitation, i.e. extra-role customer service. Second, it applies a new perspective of COR theory to determine the underlying mechanism of perceived organizational exploitation. Third, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to explore the boundary conditions under which the destructive effects of perceived organizational exploitation can be mitigated.

This study expands on research related to the dark side of personality traits by examining how individual dark personality affects proactive work behaviours. Specifically, the authors consider paranoia as a dark personality trait and propose that it negatively relates to perceived psychological safety and indirectly affects frontline employees' (FLEs) willingness to report customer complaints as well as their extra-role customer service. The authors also posit that empathetic leadership is a focal, contextual factor that mitigates the impact of paranoia on perceived psychological safety and, consequently, the willingness to report customer complaints and engage in extra-role customer service behaviour.

The model was tested on a sample of 252 FLEs using process macro (Hayes, 2017) and AMOS. Data were collected from FLEs working in different hospitality organisations using a time-lagged design; supervisor-rated employee extra-role customer service was also measured.

The authors found that FLEs with a paranoid personality trait had a lesser sense of psychological safety at work, which reduced their willingness to engage in proactive work behaviours. However, this negative effect was mitigated by the presence of an empathetic leader.

The results are important because research has yet to determine which actions managers should take to counter the negative effects of dark personalities in the workplace.

Customer service is crucial for organizations' survival and competitiveness in the hospitality industry. The purpose of this study is to examine how and when servant leadership affects extra-role customer service.

The hypotheses were tested with a sample of 302 employees from a passenger transport company in China.

Results demonstrate that servant leadership was positively related to extra-role customer service and that this relation was mediated by relational identification. In addition, the mediating effect of relational identification in the relation between servant leadership and extra-role customer service was contingent on prosocial motivation.

The study is the first to explore the relation between servant leadership and extra-role customer service from the perspective of relational identification and the moderating role of prosocial motivation.

This study aims to investigate the influence of illegitimate tasks on frontline hospitality employees’ in-role and extra-role performance via the mediating role of thriving at work and the moderating role of work centrality.

Survey data were collected from 264 supervisor–subordinate pairs from three hotels in Jiangsu, China and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Illegitimate tasks negatively affected hospitality employees’ in-role and extra-role performance by inhibiting thriving at work. In addition, work centrality strengthened the impact of illegitimate tasks on thriving at work and their indirect effect on in-role and extra-role performance via reduced thriving at work.

First, managers should avoid assignment of unnecessary tasks. However, many tasks that could be viewed as illegitimate must still be performed; the results demonstrate that managers must be mindful of how such tasks are assigned and to whom, and should take steps to minimize and/or manage potential negative reactions to illegitimate tasks.

This study enriches the illegitimate tasks literature by examining its influence on the frontline hospitality employees’ in-role and extra-role performance and highlights a novel mediating mechanism linking illegitimate tasks and employee performance using conservation of resource theory. In addition, this reveals the novel moderating effect of work centrality.