The effect of spiritual leadership on proactive customer service performance: The roles of psychological empowerment and power distance

Leadership significantly impacts employee service performance, particularly in the hospitality industry. Value-based leadership approaches, such as spiritual leadership, which emphasizes values, attitudes, and behaviors that inspire employees through vision, hope, and altruistic love, are crucial. Spiritual leadership has been linked to positive employee outcomes like entrepreneurial behavior, employee voice, and organizational citizenship behavior. However, its effect on proactive customer service performance—employees' extra-role efforts to serve customers—remains unclear. This study aims to address this gap by examining how spiritual leadership influences proactive customer service performance in the hospitality industry, focusing on the mediating role of psychological empowerment and the moderating role of power distance. Proactive customer service is vital for gaining a competitive advantage by improving customer satisfaction, thus making this research critical.

Existing research demonstrates a positive correlation between spiritual leadership and various employee behaviors. Studies show its positive influence on entrepreneurial behavior, employee voice, organizational citizenship behavior, customer-oriented boundary-spanning behavior, job performance, and work engagement. However, the literature lacks a clear understanding of how spiritual leadership specifically impacts proactive customer service performance among frontline employees in hospitality. This study builds upon social cognitive theory, which suggests that individuals' behaviors are shaped by their experiences and environment, including leadership styles and cultural factors. The theory posits that spiritual leadership can impact employees' psychological empowerment, influencing their proactive customer service behaviors. Furthermore, power distance, reflecting the degree to which a society accepts unequal power distribution, is considered a crucial cultural factor influencing employees' responses to leadership. High power distance may hinder proactive behavior, while low power distance may encourage it.

This study employed a quantitative research design. Data were collected from a sample of 263 matched leader-employee dyads in a Chinese hotel chain. The sample comprised 45 managers and 270 frontline employees in hotels situated in Xian and Wuhan. Data were gathered through questionnaires. The questionnaire items were translated into Chinese using a translation-back translation approach to ensure accuracy and cultural relevance. A random sampling method was employed to select participants. The questionnaires measured spiritual leadership, psychological empowerment (meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact), power distance, and proactive customer service performance (rated by managers). Control variables included age, education, experience, and organizational tenure. Confirmatory factor analysis ensured the validity and reliability of the measures. The hypotheses were tested using PROCESS macro for SPSS, enabling analysis of direct, indirect, and moderated effects. This approach utilized ordinary least squares regression and bootstrapping to accommodate potential non-normality in data distribution.

The study's findings support all three hypotheses. First, spiritual leadership is positively associated with proactive customer service performance. Second, psychological empowerment mediates the relationship between spiritual leadership and proactive customer service performance. Spiritual leadership positively impacts employees' psychological empowerment, leading to increased proactive customer service. Third, power distance moderates the relationship between spiritual leadership and proactive customer service performance. In low power distance contexts, the positive impact of spiritual leadership on proactive customer service is stronger than in high power distance contexts. The study utilized Model 4 of the PROCESS macro to analyze the direct and indirect effects of spiritual leadership on proactive customer service performance. The results show a significant positive direct effect (B=0.19, p<0.01), and a significant indirect effect mediated by psychological empowerment (B=0.06, p<0.05). Model 1 of the PROCESS macro was used to examine the moderating effect of power distance. The interaction effect was significant (B=-0.11, p<0.05), indicating that power distance moderates the relationship between spiritual leadership and proactive customer service. Simple slope tests further confirmed this, showing a stronger positive relationship between spiritual leadership and proactive customer service in low power distance contexts (B=0.43, p<0.001) compared to high power distance contexts (B=0.21, p<0.01).

The findings of this study provide compelling evidence for the positive impact of spiritual leadership on proactive customer service performance in the hospitality industry. The mediating role of psychological empowerment highlights the mechanism through which spiritual leadership operates: by fostering a sense of meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact, spiritual leaders empower their employees, motivating them to engage in proactive service behaviors. The moderating role of power distance underscores the importance of considering cultural context. In low power distance cultures, employees are more likely to challenge norms and take initiative, amplifying the benefits of spiritual leadership. These findings offer valuable insights for both researchers and practitioners in the hospitality sector, emphasizing the need to cultivate spiritual leadership and create an empowering workplace environment to improve customer service.

This study contributes to the existing leadership literature by investigating the mechanism and boundary conditions of spiritual leadership's influence on proactive customer service performance. The mediating role of psychological empowerment and the moderating effect of power distance are key contributions. Future research could explore other potential mediators (e.g., psychological capital, core self-evaluation), moderators (e.g., organizational culture, leadership styles), and broaden the study's scope to include diverse cultural contexts. Investigating the impact of proactive customer service on customer satisfaction and organizational outcomes would also be beneficial.

The study's primary limitation is the use of a sample exclusively from Chinese employees in the hospitality sector. While this allows for a focused examination of power distance, it limits the generalizability of the findings to other cultures. Additionally, although the sample size is consistent with previous research, a larger sample size could provide more robust results. The cross-sectional nature of the data also limits the ability to establish causal relationships definitively.