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Using the conservation of resources (COR) theory, the present study aims to examine the role of participative leadership in frontline service employees (FLEs)’ service recovery performance. The present study also tests FLEs’ role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) as a theoretically relevant mediator and FLE trait mindfulness as an important moderator.

Data were collected using time-lagged (three rounds, two weeks apart) from two sources (193 FLEs and 772 customers, who experienced a service failure). Structural equation modeling (Mplus, 8.6) was employed to analyze the data.

The results revealed that participative leadership was positively associated with FLEs service recovery performance, both directly and indirectly, via RBSE. The results also showed that FLE trait mindfulness moderated the link of participative leadership with RBSE and the indirect association of participative leadership with service recovery performance, via RBSE.

This study suggests that organizational leaders who exhibit participative leadership behavior are valuable for organizations. By demonstrating such behaviors, they boost FLEs' RBSE, which in turn improves their service recovery performance.

The present work makes important contributions to the literature on service recovery performance by foregrounding two important yet overlooked antecedents (participative leadership and RBSE) of FLE service recovery performance. The present work also contributes to the nascent literature on the antecedents and outcomes of RBSE in service contexts.

Given the intensified need to be responsive to change, employees' discretionary and constructive efforts, such as those aimed at effecting workplace functional change (i.e. taking charge), are required to enhance organizational effectiveness. Therefore, the authors reckon that due to their serving attitude of prioritizing the needs of others above the self and their motivational qualities, the servant leadership approach can enhance the confidence of subordinates' capabilities to perform a range of meaningful activities (i.e. role breadth self-efficacy; RBSE), which in turn should facilitate their engagement in taking charge.

The authors collected data from 324 leader-subordinate dyads (i.e. academicians) from two federal universities in Nigeria. The authors assessed the measurement and structural models with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

This study found that servant leadership and RBSE were crucial enablers of subordinates' taking charge. Furthermore, a positive relationship between servant leadership and RBSE was found. Lastly, RBSE was a partial mediating mechanism partly underlying the positive relationship between servant leadership and taking charge.

Selecting and training leaders to practice servant leadership in Nigerian public universities may serve as a springboard for employees to take charge because it also enables them to develop their RBSE.

The current study sheds light on the psychological process through which servant leadership affects subordinates' taking charge by identifying RBSE as a crucial motivational state partly underlying the process.

Despite the increasingly growing empirical research on leader humor, the critical issue of how and when leader humor affects newcomer adjustment was largely overlooked. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between leader humor and newcomer adjustment. Based on social information processing theory, the authors identify newcomers' role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) as the mediator and suggest that newcomers' cognitive flexibility moderates the effects.

Data were obtained from a 2-wave sample of 195 newcomers. The authors utilized the PROCESS procedure developed by Hayes to assess the hypothesized moderated mediation model.

The findings showed that leader humor could boost newcomers' RBSE which, in turn, was beneficial to newcomer adjustment. Besides, newcomers' cognitive flexibility plays a moderating role in the relationship between leader humor and newcomers' RBSE.

This study utilized a cross-sectional research design, making the design difficult to obtain causal conclusions. Moreover, the data were all based on self-reports from newcomers, which may raise a concern of common method bias.

This paper extends the literature on leader humor and newcomer adjustment by treating RBSE as the mediator and newcomers' cognitive flexibility as the moderator. This study is one of several empirical studies to test the link between leader humor and newcomer adjustment.

Reflecting a behavioral orientation specific to leaders in Confucian-based cultures, paternalistic leadership appears relevant to the Vietnamese business context. Taking healthcare organizations in Vietnam as a source of data collection, the purpose of this paper is to seek an insight into the relationship between paternalistic leadership and idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) among clinical members.

The data were harvested from 1,182 clinical employees and 168 direct supervisors from 19 hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

The data analysis revealed that authoritarian leadership behaviors displayed a weak negative link with employees’ i-deals, while the benevolence and morality dimensions of paternalistic leadership exhibited positive relationships with i-deals. The research results also provide evidence for the roles of organizational identification and role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) in mediating the relationships between paternalistic leadership dimensions and i-deals. The current study also verified the utility of employees’ flexible role identity as an enhancer of both the relationship between organizational identification and i-deals, as well as of the relationship between RBSE and i-deals.

This study extends the leadership literature by unveiling the role of paternalistic leadership in fostering i-deals among clinicians through organizational identification and RBSE as dual mediation paths as well as flexible role identity as a moderator of the relationship between both organizational identification and RBSE and i-deals.

The topic of employees’ taking charge behaviors has garnered increasing interest in both practical and academic fields. Leaders play a critical role in influencing followers’ taking charge behaviors, yet few studies have explored the predicting role of benevolent leadership. Drawing from proactive motivation literature, this paper aims to investigate a moderated mediation model that examines work engagement as the mediator and role-breadth self-efficacy as the moderator in the relationship between benevolent leadership and taking charge.

Matched data were collected from 297 followers and their group leaders in three subsidiaries of a large telecommunication company in China. The authors used hierarchical linear modeling to test the hypotheses.

The results revealed that benevolent leadership was positively related to followers’ work engagement and consequently their taking charge behaviors. Moreover, such moderated mediation relationship was stronger among followers who had low rather than high levels of role-breadth self-efficacy.

The primary contribution of this study is building a contingent model for the effect of benevolent leadership on follower taking charge and thereby extending the nomological networks of both benevolent leadership and taking charge literatures. Another contribution is that this research provides a new perspective to understand how leadership leads to followers’ taking charge behaviors.

This is the first study to investigate how and when benevolent leadership predicts follower taking charge.

Service-dominant logic perspective underscores the role of customers as value co-creators for an organization. The purpose of this paper is to build the understanding of how HR flexibility contributes to customer value co-creation behavior through mediating roles of employees’ role breadth self-efficacy and customer-organization identification and also to assess the interaction between CSR and role breadth self-efficacy in predicting customer-organization identification, leading to a higher level of customer value co-creation behavior.

Responses to the questionnaire survey came from 214 managers and 427 sales employees from 62 software companies, and 427 purchase managers of their customer companies in Vietnam context.

Research findings confirmed the path from HR flexibility to customer value co-creation behavior through the mediating mechanisms of role breadth self-efficacy and customer-organization identification. The research data also provided evidence for the role of CSR in enhancing the effect of employees’ role breadth self-efficacy on customer-organization identification.

The novel relationship between HR flexibility and customer value co-creation behavior extends both HRM and service-dominant logic literature. The moderation mechanism of CSR for that relationship further converges CSR into HRM research stream.

Employees' entrepreneurial behavior, innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking can contribute to business performance and success, making it important for the organization. Yet, little is known about how management can promote their employees' entrepreneurial behaviors. Based on workplace resources theories, the present study tested a serial mediation model. Empowering leadership predicts employees' resources of role breadth self-efficacy and meaningful work via demand-ability fit and need-supply fit, which subsequently lead employees to exhibit entrepreneurial behaviors.

Korean employees (n = 200) working in a variety of industries participated in a two-wave survey with a five-week time lag.

Structural equation modeling supported a serial mediation model showing how empowering leadership can promote employees' person-job fit. Increased person-job fit was related to enhanced employees' role breadth self-efficacy and meaningful work, which in turn predicted entrepreneurial behaviors. Alternative models with more direct paths did not improve model fit, highlighting the roles of the mediators. Empowering leadership is an important resource facilitating entrepreneurial activities through its influence on employees' fit perceptions and resources.

The present study contributes to entrepreneurial behavior literature by showing the importance of job and personal resources in explaining the determinants of employees' entrepreneurial behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and verify a motivational aspect of goal-based innovation that accounts for the effect of goal-directed self-regulation processes on innovative behavior. Its purpose is to extend present knowledge of the motivational antecedents to innovation at work. Additionally, the study assesses the extent to which the positive effect of the proactive generation of goals may increase as a result of role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) (defined as individuals’ perceived capacities to exercise proactive, interpersonal, and integrative activities above and beyond the formal requirements of their job descriptions (Parker, 1998; Parker et al., 2006).

A survey was conducted with a sample of 395 male and female administrative employees in two institutions in central Italy (city hall).

The results confirmed the two hypotheses: proactive goal generation was a strong predictor of individual work innovative behavior and the RBSE as a psychological state, is directly related to proactive and innovative behavior and it is also moderator in the relationship between proactive goal generation and innovative behavior.

The data were collected using one-time, self-report measures and with the cross-sectional research design.

The results of this study imply that pro-innovation organizational strategies and practices should stimulate among workers an anticipatory, self-directed approach toward professional action in the workplace. It is management’s task to encourage a proactive environment of change-oriented goals and the corresponding strategies with which they may be realized. Creating such an environment would provide a motivational stimulus that could effectively guide workers’ proactive and innovative conduct.

The results of this study contribute to change human resources management practices in public administrations where administrative employees have been assigned goals that they were required to meet by performing well-defined tasks. Recently, public administrations have been encouraged to innovate and answer with efficiency to new public policies and customers’ demands. Thus, human resources management needs to find new solutions to address these changing demands and employees’ changing attitudes and behaviors.

Furthermore, the results of this study contribute to broadening understanding of the psychological factors that can boost the positive effect of self-regulatory efforts on creativity and individual innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the antecedents of employees’ perceived employability based on both self-concept and human capital theory. The study tested the relationship between employees’ self-concepts and perceived employability by using organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and role-breadth self-efficacy. This study also examined the interactive relationship between self-concepts and voluntary leaning behavior, which can be viewed as a means of enhancing human capital.

Data were collected from 301 employees of an organization in Korea.

The results demonstrated that OBSE and its interaction with voluntary learning behavior were positively correlated with perceived employability.

The data were cross-sectional. Causal inferences should be made with caution.

Unlike previous literature that has relied primarily on human capital theory, this study draws on self-concept theory to show that employee self-concept can be an antecedent of perceived employability. Furthermore, this study argues that employees’ perceived employability may be more fully understood through the lenses of both self-concept and human capital theories.

Drawing on the model of proactive motivation, the purpose of this paper is to examine how transformational leadership influences followers’ voice behavior through three proactive motivation states, namely, “reason to,” “can do” and “energized to.” It also examines the moderating role of followers’ proactive personality in the relationship between transformational leadership and employee voice.

The online survey was distributed through Qualtrics using a two-wave design. In total, 1,454 participants completed the survey at Time 1, of those 447 also completed the survey at Time 2.

Transformational leadership influences employee voice via followers’ promotion focus, role-breadth self-efficacy and affective commitment. Followers’ proactive personality attenuates the impact of transformational leadership on voice, supporting the substitute for leadership hypothesis.

Self-reported data are the main limitation of the present study. Other limitations include treating employee voice as a unidimensional construct and oversimplifying the impact of positive affect on voice.

The present study suggests that training managers to demonstrate more transformational leadership behavior, enhancing employees’ proactive motivation and hiring proactive individuals are strategies to facilitate employee voice.

The present study contributes to a better understanding of employee voice from a proactive motivation perspective. It also demonstrates that followers’ proactive personality is important “boundary condition” to transformational leadership.