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The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between leadership, employee engagement and service orientation, specific to the private service sector organizations in India. The paper also explores the ability of leadership style and engagement to predict service orientation in the given cross section.

The paper has used a single cross-sectional descriptive design. Purposive sampling has been used to identify respondents who are managers in the private service sector organisations in India. A valid sample size of 106 has been used for the analysis. Instruments used for perceived leadership style are as follows: Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-5X short form); Employee Engagement E3 (DDI) and Service Orientation (Frimpong and Wilson, 2012).

Service orientation is found to be strongly correlated to employee engagement and employee engagement is a strong predictor of service orientation. The other relationships which are significant and moderately correlated are that of transformational leadership and employee engagement and also of transformational leadership and service orientation.

The study highlights the importance and significant role of leadership and employee engagement for higher service orientation in the given cross section. The mediating impact of employee engagement of the leadership style and service orientation relationship could be further explored through path analysis or structured equation modeling techniques.

The research emphasizes that organizations need to focus on employee engagement as much as they focus on customers. The differential advantage to organizations will come through the employees and their behaviors towards customers. Appropriate leadership styles that drive engagement and service-oriented behaviors can be fostered in organizations to drive service performance. The mediating impact of employee engagement of the leadership style and service orientation relationship could be further explored through path analysis or structured equation modeling techniques.

The research is focused in the private service sector organizations in India and data and results support the need to focus on employees for higher scores on customer parameters. The respondents are from a cross section of service organizations and, hence, emphasizing the interplay of the three variables across organizations. The paper supports the critical role of leadership and employees in creating a higher service orientation.

This study examined the effectiveness of a 4.5-day service leadership program for students from Chinese universities using objective outcome evaluation. The participants were assessed before and after the program, with two post-test measurements (immediate assessment and assessment 12 days after the completion of class learning). At pretest and two posttest time points, the participants completed a questionnaire measuring positive youth development, service leadership qualities and beliefs, and life satisfaction. Results showed that students’ performance in both the immediate posttest and follow-up test was better than that in the pretest. Despite the limitations of the one-group pretest-posttest design, results suggest that the curricular-based service leadership program was effective to promote students’ positive youth development, service leadership qualities and beliefs, as well as life satisfaction, and the effectiveness maintained a short period after the class had ended. While the existing findings are promising, these findings should be replicated in the future.

The challenge of developing leadership in a mass public service where previous notions of leadership have been narrow and limited only to senior positions is being taken up by the National Skills Academy for Social Care. This article describes the leadership development challenge in the English adult care sector, which is undergoing major policy and organisational change as a result of greater control of resources passing directly to people who need care support. The author sets out the initial guiding principles of the Skills Academy for Social Care and their approach to leadership development rooted in the values of the care sector and the reality of care and support work ‐ dispersed, low status, highly skilled and with a strong commitment to rights, entitlements and empowerment. In particular the Academy is adopting an emphasis on behaviours and personal attributes in its leadership approach that are informed by people who use care services who demand more responsive and personalised support. The article sets out a number of key principles on which the Academy will seek partnerships and collaboration to deliver greater engagement with leadership development across all who work in the sector.

Applying servant leadership theory, this study aims to investigate whether servant leadership predicts service excellence of bank employees through mediating role of psychological capital (PsyCap). It also tests buffering role of conscientiousness in boosting service excellence.

The study uses data collected from 224 bank employees. SPSS and jamovi statistics were used for data analysis.

Study findings suggest a significant relationship between servant leadership, service excellence and PsyCap. PsyCap emerged as a mediator, and conscientiousness moderated the nexus between servant leadership and service excellence.

Findings highlight important implications for organisational practitioners. Because servant leadership leads to service excellence, practitioners should consider adopting servant leadership at every organizational level. Further, servant leaders could enhance followers’ PsyCap for creating service excellence. Organisations should use customized training programs and development interventions to enhance service excellence.

This study is one of the few studies to investigate the mediating role of PsyCap as a personal resource and buffering role of conscientiousness for service sector employees. Study generates new insights on employee experiences working in service sectors.

The purpose of this paper is to identify attributes and practices that are salient for effectiveness in middle- and senior-level service leadership positions.

Critical incident interviews were conducted with 17 key informants, who were service leaders in various service sectors in Hong Kong, and with ten stakeholders.

Grounded theory analysis generated a 7 Cs model with seven categories of service leadership attributes and practices: character, choreography, care, creativity, charisma, collaborating and competence self-improvement, and 24 constituent concepts. There was concordance between pairs of key informants and stakeholders.

Further research could investigate the impact on frontline service leaders’ performance if one or more of the 7 Cs are perceived to be absent or deficient among leaders at more senior levels, and whether there are acceptable substitutes for particular Cs.

The 7 Cs model identifies service leadership attributes and practices across diverse sectors.

The 7 Cs model provides a map for orienting the developmental preparation of individuals, who are aspiring to become middle- and senior-level leaders in economies that have become highly dependent on service.

Each year, millions of people around the world are affected by natural disasters. Following these disasters, many students from colleges and universities arrive to support the affected areas. These seamless leadership learning opportunities engage students by allowing them to implement the concepts they learned in a classroom. Humanitarian relief requires leadership and logistics to mobilize essential resources to aid vulnerable groups affected by these disasters. This qualitative study evaluates two separate relief projects that were hands-on, week- long service trips involving college students responding to two natural disasters in the United States of America. Using data collected from prompt-based journals, the researchers in this study sought to develop a deeper understanding of participant service experiences in relation to leadership education. Leadership education provides valuable reflection points for students and this manuscript outlines key themes from two unique service experiences. This project showcases these reflections and provides a potential qualitative assessment process for similar endeavors useful for both educators and researchers alike.

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 study was to evaluate final projects in a freshman leadership course (combining grounding in leadership theories with a service-learning component) to determine what students learned about leadership, themselves as developing leaders, and leading in the civic community, and how deeply they learned these concepts. Students found situational leadership theories, team leadership theories, and leadership principles (Drath, 2001) most relevant to their experiences. Personally, students learned about themselves as individuals, leaders, team members, and community members. Civically, students learned how to apply leadership theories, work in teams, and about the community as a system. In terms of depth of learning, based on Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy, students were able to identify, describe, and apply concepts and to some extent analyze and synthesize them. These findings suggest that using service learning to help students learn about both the theory and practice of leadership is a viable alternative.

This paper aims to examine how team-level empowering leadership related to service performance through thriving at work and how shared organizational social exchange and customer orientation moderated the latter relationships.

The authors collected the data from 283 flight attendants and their supervisors working at a major Korean airline. Multi-level analyses were used to test the effect of empowering leadership on employee outcomes.

Both team-level empowering leadership and customer orientation were significantly and indirectly associated with service performance via thriving at work. Additionally, customer orientation significantly moderated the relationship between team-level empowering leadership and thriving at work such that the relationship was stronger when customer orientation was low rather than high. In addition, shared organizational social exchange augmented the influence of team-level empowering leadership on service performance but not on thriving at work.

The findings suggest that team-level empowering leadership is more effective in enhancing thriving at work of employees when their customer orientation is low rather than high. In addition, a shared high-quality organizational social exchange augments the effect of empowering leadership on employees’ service performance.

This paper provides initial evidence of the interaction of team-level empowering leadership and individual¬-level customer orientation on thriving at work and service performance. Additionally, it documents the differential augmenting effect of shared organizational social exchange on the relationship between empowering leadership and these outcomes. Collectively, the findings explain why and when team-level empowering leadership relates to service performance.