How does despotic leadership thwart frontline employees’ role-related service behaviors? A psychological empowerment perspective

Frontline employees’ role-related service behaviors, including in-role service behaviors and extra-role service behaviors, are crucial for ensuring customer satisfaction and enhancing hospitality performance. Drawing upon the theoretical literature on psychological empowerment, we aim to elucidate how and when despotic leadership is associated with frontline employees’ role-related service behaviors. The data was collected from 241 frontline employees and their immediate supervisors across 6 sizable hotels in China. The results demonstrated that despotic leadership undermines both in-role service behaviors and extra-role service behaviors of frontline employees, and frontline employees’ psychological empowerment mediates such relationships. Our findings also demonstrated that individual traditionality, as a boundary condition, could mitigate the destructive effect of despotic leadership on frontline employees’ psychological empowerment. We also discussed the theoretical implications for scholars and practical implications for managers in the hospitality industry.