Frontline hotel employees’ proactive personality, I-deals, work engagement and their effect on creative performance and proactive customer service performance

Abstract The current article aims to examine the effect of job resources, in the form of idiosyncratic deals (I-deals), and hotel frontline employees’ personal resources, in the form proactive personality (PP), on work engagement (WE), creative performance (CP) and proactive customer service performance (PCSP). Specifically, this paper examines WE as the mediator between I-deals, PP and employees’ job performance (e.g., CP and PCSP). The conceptual model was tested via the data collected from hotel frontline employees in 4- and 5- star hotels in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. The results showed that I-deals and hotel frontline employees’ PP have positive effect on WE, as well as WE has positive influence on hotel frontline employees’ CP and PCSP. The results showed that PP improves job performance whereas I-deals are not. In addition, WE mediates the relationships between PP and CP. This article provides theoretical and managerial implications, as well as limitations and future research directions.