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Based on self-determination theory, this research paper aims to explore the implication of exploitative leadership for hospitality employees’ proactive customer service performance (PCSP) via harmonious passion for work (HPFW) and the moderating mechanism of power distance.

The authors’ sample included a total of 207 leader–follower dyads from three Chinese hotels. Hierarchical multiple regression and the PROCESS macro were used to analyze the data.

The results indicated that exploitative leadership has a negative indirect relationship with hospitality employees’ PCSP through decreased HPFW, and power distance plays a protective role of alleviating the negative implications of exploitative leadership for hospitality employees’ HPFW and PCSP.

Hotels are suggested to develop strict codes of conduct and adopt zero-tolerance policies for exploitative leadership. Additionally, hotels should also act to improve employees’ HPFW and pay attention to low-power-distance employees.

This research enriches exploitative leadership literature by investigating its effect on PCSP. Further, this research investigates HPFW as a mechanism linking exploitative leadership to PCSP. Finally, this research establishes the relationships among exploitative leadership, HPFW and PCSP by investigating the contingent impact of power distance.

Drawing from self-determination theory, this study aims to examine the effect of leader humor on frontline hospitality employees’ service performance and proactive customer service performance (PCSP) via harmonious passion (HP) for work with employee neuroticism as the moderating mechanism.

This study controlled for the nested effect and tested all the hypotheses with Mplus 7.0 using a time-lagged three-wave survey of 232 Chinese supervisor–subordinate dyads.

The results indicated that leader humor promotes frontline hospitality employees’ service performance and PCSP by enhancing their HP. Furthermore, neuroticism was shown to strengthen the direct impact of leader humor on employee HP and its indirect impact on employee service performance and employee PCSP through HP.

First, this research contributes to the leader humor literature through exploring its impact on the service performance and PCSP of frontline hospitality employees. Second, this research develops a new framework to explain the leader humor-employee service outcomes relationship using self-determination theory. Finally, the focus on the moderating role of neuroticism helps to explain the “when” question of leader humor.

By investigating trust in the organization as a mediator and traditionality as a moderator, this study aims to examine the effect perceived organizational exploitation poses on frontline hotel employees’ service performance.

A three-wave survey that targets 219 supervisor–subordinate dyads from four Chinese hotels was conducted to test the hypotheses. The authors used SPSS 20.0 and AMOS 21.0 to analyze the data and verify the theoretical model.

This study found that perceived organizational exploitation exerts a destructive impact on frontline hotel employees’ service performance. Trust in the organization is a full mediator of the link connecting perceived organizational exploitation to service performance. Furthermore, traditionality weakens perceived organizational exploitation’s impact on trust in the organization and subsequent service performance.

The authors’ findings remind hotels to cease exploiting their employees to avoid compromising service performance. Hotels should also endeavor to instill trust among employees toward the hotel and allocate more attention to employees with lower levels of traditionality.

First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to explore the impact of perceived organizational exploitation on frontline hotel employees’ service performance. Second, this study reveals a novel mechanism underlying the connection between perceived organizational exploitation and service performance. Finally, this study identifies frontline hotel employees’ traditionality as a vital moderator that mitigates the negative relationships among perceived organizational exploitation, trust in the organization and service performance.

This paper aims to investigate how chief executive officer (CEO) responsible leadership impacts corporate social responsibility (CSR) and organization performance by considering diverse organizational climates (including ethical, service and initiative climates) as mediators and CEO founder status as a moderator.

This study analyzed survey data from 212 service organizations in China with structural equation modeling.

The results clearly established that CEO responsible leadership played a crucial role in augmenting both CSR and organization performance by shaping positive organizational climates. Notably, CEO responsible leadership significantly fostered ethical, service and initiative climates. Furthermore, an ethical climate promoted CSR and organization performance, whereas service and initiative climates specifically enhanced organization performance. Additionally, responsible CEOs with founder status exhibited a higher propensity for enhancing ethical, service and initiative climates within service organizations.

Service organizations should take measures to build CEO responsible leadership, especially for CEOs with founder status. Furthermore, service organizations should motivate employees to reach consensus on ethical conducts, superior service and proactive approach to work.

First, the findings on CEO responsible leadership’s effects on CSR and organization performance extend the research on responsible leadership outcomes. Second, this paper adds to responsible leadership literature through exploring the mediating effects of ethical, service and initiative climates. Finally, the finding on the moderating role of founder CEOs offers a novel perspective regarding the boundary condition of the effects of CEO responsible leadership.

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.

Drawing on social exchange theory, this study aims to investigate the relation of customer sexual harassment (CSH) and customer-oriented organizational citizenship behaviors (customer-oriented OCB), as well as the mediation of customer–employee exchange (CEX) and the moderation of hostile attribution bias.

The hypotheses were examined through a field study performed in six hotels in three Chinese cities and an experimental study.

The results revealed that CSH undermined the quality of CEX, leading employees to withdraw from customer-oriented OCB. Additionally, the hostile attribution bias of service employees reinforced the direct relationship between CSH and CEX and its indirect relationship with customer-oriented OCB via CEX.

The findings suggest that hospitality organizations should endeavor to reduce the occurrence of CSH, and that by valuing and encouraging the development of high-quality CEX, they can mitigate its detrimental effects. Special attention should also be paid to hospitality employees holding strong hostile attribution bias.

First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to explore the influence of CSH on customer-oriented OCB among hotel employees. In addition, examining the effect of CSH from the social exchange perspective represents a new theoretical approach. The finding also contributes to the literature on CEX by identifying an important antecedent. Finally, by investigating hostile attribution bias as a moderator, this research provides insights into how individual differences moderate the destructive influence of CSH.

Drawing on organizational justice theory, this study aims to investigate how perceived organizational exploitation induces frontline hospitality employees’ organizational and interpersonal deviance. Specifically, this study explored the mediating effect of distributive and procedural justice, as well as the moderating effect of justice sensitivity.

The focal research analyzed multiphase survey data from 267 frontline service employees with structural equation modeling.

The results revealed that perceived organizational exploitation induced frontline hospitality employees’ organizational and interpersonal deviance through their perceptions of distributive and procedural justice. Moreover, employees’ justice sensitivity amplified perceived organizational exploitation’s harmful impact on justice perceptions and its conditional influence on organizational and interpersonal deviance.

Organizations should take actions to reduce the occurrence of exploitation to prevent employees’ workplace deviance behaviors. Moreover, organizations can foster employees’ justice perceptions and take care of employees with strong justice sensitivity to reduce the destructive behaviors triggered by organizational exploitation.

By investigating frontline employees’ workplace deviant behaviors, this research identifies new outcomes of exploitation by hospitality organizations. Moreover, the research contributes by offering a justice-based perspective to understand the effects of perceived organizational exploitation. Furthermore, this research helps identify a new boundary condition of being exploited by organizations.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of servant leadership on hospitality employees’ proactive customer service performance (PCSP) by focusing on the sequential mediating roles of harmonious passion and customer orientation and the moderating role of others’ approval of contingent self-esteem.

This study uses structural equation modeling with the four-wave data collected from eight Chinese hotels.

This study finds that servant leadership can promote hospitality employees’ PCSP by sequentially boosting their harmonious passion for work and customer orientation. Moreover, others’ approval of contingent self-esteem strengthens servant leadership’s effect on harmonious passion for work.

First, this study extends the servant leadership research by extending its outcome to hospitality employees’ PCSP. Second, this study enriches the understanding of the mediating mechanism between servant leadership and PCSP. Third, this study advances the research on servant leadership by identifying the moderating effect of employees’ others’ approval of contingent self-esteem between servant leadership and harmonious passion.

Drawing on research on organisation-based self-esteem (OBSE) and self-consistency theory, this study aims to investigate whether, how and when leader aggressive humour (LAH) impacts hospitality employees’ proactive customer service performance (PCSP).

A total of 294 supervisor–employee dyads from eight hotels in China participated in the survey. The data were analysed by hierarchical multiple regression and PROCESS macro in SPSS.

LAH undermines hospitality employees’ PCSP by threatening their OBSE, and this effect is significant only for highly entitled employees.

Organisations could improve leaders’ awareness of the dark side of aggressive humour, especially for those who supervise highly entitled employees. Organisations could also cultivate positive leader–member relationships to improve employees’ OBSE and provide training for highly entitled employees to cope with leaders’ LAH.

This study contributes to the LAH literature by examining its influence on hospitality employees’ PCSP and identifying the mechanism and boundary conditions underlying this effect.

This study aims to examine the effect of workplace sexual harassment (WSH) on hospitality employees’ workplace deviance and family undermining behaviors by focusing on the mediating effect of depression.

This research uses a three-phase field survey to collect data from hotels in China with a final sample of 266 hospitality employees. Data analysis techniques include descriptive statistics, confirmative factor analysis and hierarchical multiple regression.

This research finds that WSH is positively related to workplace deviance; WSH positively affects family undermining; depression is a mediator in the relationship between WSH and workplace deviance; and depression mediates the relationship between WSH and family undermining.

First, this research goes beyond the existing WSH literature by extending outcome variables to workplace deviance. Second, it is among the first to investigate the relationship between WSH and hospitality employees’ family life. Third, the examination of depression as a mediator advances the literature by unraveling the mediating mechanism underlying the effects of WSH on hospitality employees.