Search results

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.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the structural relationship between empowerment, service training, service reward, job attitudes such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and customer‐oriented prosocial behavior of employees.

The research question is examined using a sample of Korean hotel employees. Structural equation analysis is used to test various research hypotheses and examine the extent to which job satisfaction and organizational commitment mediate the effect of empowerment, service training, and service reward on customer‐oriented prosocial behavior.

First, the greater the job satisfaction, the greater is the role‐prescribed customer service of employees. Second, the greater the job satisfaction, the greater is the organizational commitment. Third, empowerment has a significant effect on organizational commitment and extra‐role customer service. Fourth, service training has a significant effect on job satisfaction, but it has a negatively direct effect on organizational commitment. Fifth, service reward has a significant influence on job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Based on these empirical findings, employee management should be shifted from a transactional to a relationship‐building orientation – the former being short‐term goal‐oriented and the latter long‐term. Additionally, service organizations should evaluate employee lifetime value (ELV) as well as customer lifetime value (CLV).

There is a need to extend the results to a diverse range of service industries.

This research explains that empowerment, service training, and service reward contribute to the evaluation of organizational commitment through the medium of job satisfaction.

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.

Applying affect-as-information theory, this research analyzed the relationship of leader affective presence and employee proactive customer service performance (PCSP) in hospitality organizations. It further explored when and how leader affective presence influenced employee PCSP.

Taking a sample of 110 teams with 361 pairs of leaders and employees in Chinese hotels, a moderated mediation model was tested across individual and team levels using hierarchical linear modeling.

This study found that leader positive affective presence (LPAP) had a positive effect on employee PCSP, whereas leader negative affective presence (LNAP) had a negative effect on employee PCSP. Employee prosocial motivation mediated the relationship between leader affective presence and employee PCSP. The employee power distance value weakened the LNAP–employee prosocial motivation relationship, which subsequently mitigated the negative indirect effect of LNAP on employee PCSP through employee prosocial motivation.

The sample was drawn from one hotel group in China, which may limit external validity.

Hospitality organizations should emphasize the affective traits of leaders in employee initiatives. Leader affective presence should be considered during recruitment and promotion. Management should pay more attention to employee emotional management and value alignment.

The findings provide deeper insight into the role of LPAP and LNAP in influencing employees’ PCSP. It sheds new light on the mechanisms and conditions through which leader affective presence might heighten or hinder employee PCSP.

Which type of managerial control makes bank contact employees more likely to perform so called prosocial behavior toward their customers (i.e. behaviors which contribute to the bank’s positive image, perceived good service and customers’ satisfaction)? Four types of formal controls are considered here: training, behavioral control, pay administration and managerial orientation. An empirical study performed in six branches of a charter bank shows that pay management has the strongest effect on service employee prosocial behavior. Training also affects prosocial behavior significantly, but not as strongly as does perceived pay fairness. In addition it is shown that pay is the primary contributor to these employees’ perceived workplace fairness.

Prosocial service behaviors play a major role in the hospitality industry. However, few studies have examined how job resourcefulness affects prosocial service behaviors. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between job resourcefulness and prosocial service behaviors as well as clarify the mediating effect of work engagement.

A questionnaire was developed to collect data from 282 frontline service employees in Taiwan’s hotel industry. Structural equation modeling was conducted to test the hypotheses of this research.

The results indicate that job resourcefulness is positively related to role-prescribed service behaviors, extra-role service behaviors and cooperation. Furthermore, work engagement mediates the relationship between job resourcefulness and prosocial service behaviors.

The design of cross-sectional research restricts inference to the findings of cause–effect relationships. Also, the design of this study could not rule out the effect of common method variance, as all the data used in the study were acquired using the same questionnaire.

The current study contributes to the hospitality management research by investigating the link between job resourcefulness and prosocial service behaviors, and elaborating the partially mediating role of work engagement in this relationship.

The increasing importance of customer satisfaction is uncontested. Yet, banks are currently facing another major challenge, meeting the changing needs of customers. For this reason, the present study aims to examine the effect that internal service quality has on employees' prosocial customer behaviour displayed, which is crucial for customers' perception of service quality. This effect was examined both for publicly and for privately held banks.

Out of 19 banks that operate in a major Greek city, 16 agreed to cooperate. The researchers personally administered 10 questionnaires to front‐line employees of every branch, on a random basis, and gathered 113 usable questionnaires. Responses were analysed using descriptive statistics, and regression analyses.

The findings indicate that employees are more likely to improve their general performance and are more cooperative when internal service quality exists. Despite the fact that employees in both sectors agree to the fact that reliability and access are critical for displaying role‐prescribed customer behaviour, there are significant difference with regards to cooperation and extra‐role customer behaviour.

Since, the study took place in only one Greek city, increasing the sample base both in terms of the number of cities and respondents could provide safer generalizations of findings.

Quality circles, employee involvement and human resource management policies designed to stress internal service quality can enhance employees' willingness to serve customers, and in turn increase service quality provided to external customers.

The paper assesses the impact of internal service quality on customer service behaviour, focusing on the Greek banking sector.

In this chapter, we examine employee prosocial rule breaking as a response to organizations’ unfair treatment of customers. Drawing on the deontic perspective and research on third-party reactions to unfairness, we suggest employees engage in customer-directed prosocial rule breaking when they believe their organizations’ policies treat customers unfairly. Additionally, we consider employee, customer, and situational characteristics that enhance or inhibit the relationship between employees’ perceptions of organizational policy unfairness and customer-directed prosocial rule breaking.

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 work aims to use equity theory to explore how consumers assess prosocial actions as part of a mental portfolio of purchases and behaviors in a broader marketplace, seeking balance in market exchanges. Conceptualizing marketing exchange as both an exchange of perceived value and a balance between self- and collective-interest allows for segmentation by consumer sensitivity to equity and sheds light on why prosocial consumption might occur.

Two studies validate and segment consumers via their equity sensitivity. Between-subject designs with samples of consumers and marketing managers validate an equity sensitivity index that segments how people balance self- and collective-interests in marketplace exchange and predicts prosocial consumption choices.

The results indicate that Entitled decision makers are more willing to exchange collective-interest for self-interest and emphasize choices that maximize lower prices for consumers or greater profits for firms in lieu of prosocial outcomes. Benevolent decision makers, however, are more willing to exchange self-interest for collective-interest and support prosocial outcomes.

This work moves beyond research that focuses on attitudes, values and situational factors, instead using equity theory to uncover broader marketplace motivations for prosocial consumption. The research reveals that a motivating force behind prosocial consumption is how much consumers perceive they have given to, and gotten, from, the marketplace. Segmenting the market according to how consumers balance gains and losses provides an alternate approach to studying prosocial consumption, as well as a practical approach to developing targeted marketing strategies.