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1. Introduction
Servant leadership, which is a unique leadership that stresses the responsibility of leaders to facilitate others’ development and success (Ehrhart, 2004), has been indicated to be a particularly crucial leadership style in hospitality industry (Brownell, 2010; Ling et al., 2016; Zou et al., 2015). Because the tenet of servant leadership exactly accords with the purpose of creating excellent service in hospitality industry, some hospitality organizations include servant leadership principles as their operation philosophies, such as Ritz Hotel (Brownell, 2010; Ling et al., 2016). Given its importance in hospitality industry, a growing body of research has paid attention to this field and related servant leadership to hospitality employees’ work-related attitudes and behaviors, including job engagement (Ling et al., 2017), psychological well-being (Bouzari and Karatepe, 2017; Hsiao et al., 2015), customer-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (Wu et al., 2013), helping behavior (Zou et al., 2015) and service quality (Koyuncu et al., 2014; Ling et al., 2016).
In spite of these promising findings, the existing body of research concerning servant leadership in the hospitality industry sheds little light on its effect on proactive service behaviors. To the extent that customer needs are now constantly changing, delivering service that prescribed by formalized job description and standardized service procedures are insufficient (Frese and Fay, 2001; Parker et al., 2010). Thus, it is vital for hospitality employees to go beyond formalized job description and serve customers proactively (Frese and Fay, 2001; Zhu et al., 2017). Servant leadership emphasizes the promotion of others’ interests and tends to address others’ needs first (Ehrhart, 2004); it instills in employees the desire to serve others (Ehrhart, 2004). Hence, we contend that this leadership style might be influential in enhancing hospitality employees’ proactive customer service performance (PCSP), a “self-started, long-term-oriented, and persistent service behavior” (Rank et al., 2007, p. 366).
This study also attempts to address the potential mediating mechanism underlying servant leadership and PCSP. Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, individuals endeavor to minimize the resource loss in threatening situations; in contrast, an abundance of resources leads individuals to invest the available resources in obtaining additional resources (Hobfoll, 1989, 2001). As servant leaders prioritize employees’ holistic needs and stress the...