How Servant Leadership Leads to Employees’ Customer-Oriented Behavior in the Service Industry? A Dual-Mechanism Model

Although servant leadership has been acknowledged as an important predictor of employees&rsquo
behavioral outcomes in the service industry, there is still no cohesive understanding of the positive association between servant leadership and employees&rsquo
customer-oriented behavior (COB). This research, drawing on cognitive affective processing system theory (CAPS), empirically investigates the influence of servant leadership on employees&rsquo
COB by exploring two mediators (i.e., organizational identification and vitality). We conducted two studies in China, using a cross-sectional design to survey employees in service-oriented technical organizations (Study 1) and a time-lagged design to survey hospitality employees with frontline service jobs in star-level hotels (Study 2). Across both samples, we found that servant leadership enhanced employees&rsquo
COB by simultaneously increasing their organizational identification and vitality. We discuss the implications of these results for future research and practice.