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Drawing from conservation of resources (COR) and regulatory fit theories, this paper aims to propose and examine moderated mediation model of service innovative behavior among salespeople.

The hypothesized links were gauged based on time-lagged and multiple sources of data collected from salespeople and their supervisors in a large-scale multi-brand retail firm.

The hypothesized relationships were confirmed, and the moderated mediation model proposed in this paper was viable. Results suggest that person–job (P-J) fit boosts salespeople’s service innovative behavior, and intrinsic motivation (INTMOT) mediates this relationship. Promotion focus strengthens the positive influence of P-J fit on salespeople’s INTMOT. More importantly, promotion focus moderates the indirect positive link between P-J fit and service innovative behavior through INTMOT.

This research enhances the current knowledge by assessing promotion focus as a moderator of the impact of P-J fit on service innovative behavior via INTMOT among salespeople. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no established research examining the abovementioned links in the sales literature.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain the relationships between empowering leadership and a humorous work climate; and service employees' creativity and innovative behaviour in frontline service jobs.

A model of causal relationships is presented, along with formulated hypotheses. The data were collected with a survey answered by frontline service employees in hotels.

The findings indicate a strong relationship between frontline cognitive creativity production of novel ideas and the behavioural implementation of these ideas into their respective work role. Moreover, the empirical findings indicate that both empowering leadership and a humorous work climate are able to trigger frontline service employees' creativity. In addition service employees' creativity appears to be a mediating variable in the relationship between empowering leadership, a humorous work climate, and the service employees' innovative behaviour.

This study limits its focus on two factors: the stimulation of service employees' creativity and innovative behaviour in frontline service jobs, both of which offer opportunities for further research.

This study has indicated that both leadership practice and work climate play important roles in explaining service employees' creativity and innovative behaviour. In particular, managers should be aware of their empowering practices, as well focusing on the degree of a humorous work climate. An important practical managerial implication from the findings is to take humour into account and consequently to develop and implement strategies followed by necessary actions to manage humour in an appropriate manner in service organizations.

The reported study contributes to enhancing the knowledge of the roles of empowering leadership and a humorous work climate for service employees' creativity and innovative behaviour in frontline service jobs.

Employee’s service innovative behavior lays the groundwork for bottom-up innovation and ongoing service improvement in service firms. Therefore, it is vital for service organizations to understand the antecedents of employees service innovative behavior. Drawing upon the social cognitive theory, this study aims to develop a research model that examines the effects of ethical and entrepreneurial leadership on service innovative behavior.

Data were collected from 178 managers and 415 employees working in 178 small- and medium-sized (SME) hotels in Vietnam.

The findings showed that ethical leadership has direct and indirect effects on service innovative behavior, while entrepreneurial leadership only influences service innovative behavior via intrinsic motivation. In addition, trust in leader moderates the effect of intrinsic motivation on service innovative behavior

The study advances current scholarly research on leadership by combining the two areas of entrepreneurial and ethical leadership into one theoretical model and examines how these leadership styles generate hospitality employees’ service innovative behavior through the mediating effect of intrinsic motivation and the moderating effect of trust in leader.

The findings of this research offer significant implications for SME hotels and their managers. In their recruitment processes, hotels should search for particular personality traits, which have been found to predict ethical and entrepreneurial leadership. Hospitality firms also need to encourage communication between leaders and co-workers to enhance employees’ intrinsic motivation.

There are calls for research to examine whether both entrepreneurial and ethical leadership styles can be integrated to enhance employees’ positive outcomes. Evidence about the mechanism linking entrepreneurial and ethical leadership to service innovative behavior is limited. With this stated, the current study makes significant contribution to leadership and innovation literature by filling in these voids.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the under-researched work on service innovation by examining employee service innovative behavior in the Indian banking industry. In doing so, this study addresses the call for carrying out context-based research to advance service innovation literature.

Using convenience sampling and self-administered survey methods, data were obtained from professionals employed in Indian public sector banks (n=294).

Findings reveal that leader-member exchange (LMX) shares a positive relationship with employee service innovative behavior via work engagement. Results also indicate that job autonomy as moderator strengthened the relationship between LMX and employee service innovative behavior mediated by work engagement.

This study recommends that higher levels of LMX quality should be combined with enhanced levels of job autonomy for significantly influencing employee service innovative behavior.

Even though previous studies on service innovation have produced a significant piece of work, this study is among the first to propose and analyze a comprehensive and theoretically grounded structure of LMX, work engagement, job autonomy and employee service innovative behavior by incorporating social exchange and job characteristics theories.

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 research primarily aims to study the role of leader-member exchange (LMX) in frontline employees' (FLEs) innovative behaviors, whereby a mediating effect of employee happiness is proposed in this relationship. The moderating effect of service climate is also examined on the indirect effect of LMX on innovative behaviors through happiness.

The study used a sample of 303 FLEs working in various service organizations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed model.

The findings show that LMX has a positive and significant effect on FLEs' innovative behaviors and that employee happiness is an intervening variable. Service climate moderates the indirect effect of LMX on FLEs' innovative behaviors through happiness, and the effect is stronger in a low (unsupported) service climate.

The findings of this research provide prescriptive insights into the critical role of supervisory behavior in FLEs' innovative service behaviors and how positive emotions contribute to employees' willingness to innovate. Thus, these findings make a unique contribution to research in service management.

Studies examining how and when LMX can affect FLEs' innovative behaviors are limited. These findings offer new insights into the relative importance of supervisor and organizational support (service climate) in FLEs' innovative behaviors. The interaction effect of LMX and service climate has not been previously examined along with positive employee affect (happiness) and innovative behaviors.

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of workplace happiness and work engagement on employee service innovative behavior from the perspective of positive psychology. The study also examines if work engagement mediates the relationship between workplace happiness and employee service innovative behavior. Finally, it investigates how co-worker socializing and the service climate of the organization moderate the relationship between work engagement and employee service innovative behavior.

The study used survey data from 321 frontline employees working in the service sector in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Six major hypotheses were established and examined using the SPSS Statistics V22.0 Process. The measurement model was analyzed using Amos 22.

Workplace happiness and work engagement are found to be important factors affecting employee service innovative behavior. Workplace happiness influences employee service innovative behavior directly and indirectly through work engagement. Both service climate and co-worker socializing play a significant moderating role in the relationship between work engagement and employee service innovative behavior among frontline employees. Interestingly, service climate erodes this relationship while co-worker socializing enhances it.

This study provides guidelines for managers and practitioners in the service industry to promote frontline employee service innovative behavior. Specifically, the findings provide guidance for decision-makers on how to use workplace happiness to trigger the innovative service behaviors of frontline employees, taking into consideration the conditional role of service climate and co-worker socializing.

The literature on factors affecting the service innovative behavior of frontline employees in the service sector from the perspective of positive psychology is limited, especially in the context of the UAE. The data, framework and outcomes of this research address this gap and contribute to the current body of knowledge. Specifically, the study contributes to the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions in the field of positive psychology by validating the applicability of the theory in a wider organizational context.

Service innovative behavior from employees helps hospitality organizations gain a competitive advantage and sustain business flourishment. Although group diversity has been demonstrated as a predictor of employee outcomes, whether group diversity in terms of extraversion and openness enhances employee service innovative behavior remains a gap. This study aims to fill this gap by developing a multilevel model of the direct relationship between group diversity in terms of extraversion and openness and employee service innovative behavior and also the mediations and moderations behind the relationship.

The authors collectd data from 44 Chinese hospitality teams. The research model was validated by multilevel structural equation modeling.

Results showed that both group extraversion diversity and group openness diversity fostered employee service innovative behavior via creative self-efficacy. Developmental culture strengthened the effectiveness of group openness diversity on creative self-efficacy and the effectiveness of creative self-efficacy on employee service innovative behavior. Nevertheless, developmental culture did not strengthen the effectiveness of group extraversion diversity on creative self-efficacy.

Findings suggest that managers and team leaders from hospitality organizations can elicit employee service innovative behavior through increasing group diversity in terms of extraversion and openness. Hospitality practitioners also should understand that employees’ confidence for creativity is able to channel group diversity into employee service innovative endeavors. Moreover, building developmental culture is essential for hospitality teams to strengthen the effect of group diversity on innovating services.

This study expands the diversity-innovation research through unfolding both the mediations and the moderations behind the link between group diversity in terms of extraversion and openness and employee service innovative behavior.

With the rapid development of the service industry, service innovation has gradually become a hot topic in business today. How to further improve employees' service innovative behaviors has become critical to organizations' survival and success. Servant leadership, as a leadership style characterized by serving others, is closely related to employees' service innovative behaviors. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical framework to examine the influence of servant leadership on employees' service innovative behavior, the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the moderating role of identification with the leader.

To test the theoretical model, a multi-time survey method was used to collect data from 381employees from a large high-tech company in Mainland China.

The results confirm that servant leadership can promote employees' service innovative behavior and intrinsic motivation. Meanwhile, employees' intrinsic motivation partly mediates the influence of servant leadership on their service innovative behavior. Moreover, this mediating relationship is conditional on the moderating role of individual identification with the leader in the path from servant leadership to individual intrinsic motivation.

The key limitation of this study lies in the representativeness of sample data, which is the convenience of non-probability sampling and self-reported data only from a large high-tech company in China.

This study not only further verified a promotion factor of individual service innovative behavior from the perspective of leader influence, but also enriched the understanding of the positive influence of servant leadership on employees.

This study is the first to examine the relationships among servant leadership, employees' intrinsic motivation, identification with the leader and service innovative behavior. The results may help to open the “black box” of the relationship between servant leadership and employees' service innovative behavior by introducing their intrinsic motivation. The conclusions also indicate employees' identification with the leader is an important boundary condition among their relationships. Particularly, it not only moderates the relationship between servant leadership and intrinsic motivation, but also moderates the mediating role of intrinsic motivation.

The purpose of this research is to examine the indirect effect of perceived organizational customer orientation on frontline employees' (FLE) innovative behaviors (via perceived empowerment) as well as the contextual factor of supervisory fairness, which affects the strength of the indirect effect. Drawing on social exchange theory, the authors propose that FLEs' perceived organizational customer orientation positively affects their empowerment and indirectly affects innovative behaviors, and that effect is stronger in a high supervisory fairness condition.

Structural equation modeling of the data collected through a time-lagged survey of 184 employee–supervisor dyads provides support for the hypotheses. From the practitioners' perspective, this study highlights the mechanism through which perceived organizational customer orientation can affect the display of FLEs' innovative behaviors as well as the conditions that strengthen this process.

Perceived organizational customer orientation was positively related to employees' perceived empowerment. Empowerment was positively associated with supervisor-reported innovative behaviors. The indirect effect of perceived organizational customer orientation through employee empowerment on supervisor-reported innovative behaviors was also confirmed. Supervisory fairness significantly moderated the perceived organizational customer orientation and employee empowerment relationship. Finally, the indirect effect of customer orientation on supervisor-reported innovative behaviors through empowerment was significant for both high supervisory fairness and low supervisory fairness; however, the effect was stronger in a high fairness condition.

Service managers can benefit from these findings by improving the work environment characteristics.

This study makes an important contribution to existing research on perceived organizational customer orientation and FLEs' innovative behaviors as extant research has only examined the direct unmediated effect of customer orientation on innovative behaviors. Moreover, the authors’ moderated mediation model presents a new insight into how perceived organizational customer orientation influences FLEs' innovative behaviors and when this effect is more pronounced.