Abusive supervision and proactive customer service performance: The mediator role of organizational identification

In recent decades, researchers have been paying increasing attention to destructive behaviors in the workplace, especially abusive supervision, since it has been shown to have substantial negative effects on subordinates. In particular, frontline employees in service companies, such as hotels, must exhibit effective and proactive customer-oriented behaviors, which play an important role in the level of service quality and customer satisfaction. In this case, it is important for hotels to interpret what many encourage service employ- ees’ proactive customer service performance (PCSP). Thus, based on the Conservation of Resources Theory, this study examines the impact of abusive supervision on the PCSP of hotel employees. This is a replication study of Lyu et al.(2016) which used data obtained by Chinese hotel employees, but this study applied the same relationship to the U.S. hotel employees. According to the findings, abusive supervision directly affects employees’ attitudes, behaviors, and motivation to exhibit PCSP. This study not only adds to the literature on abusive supervision and PCSP in the hospitality industry but also suggests that although it is important for managers to increase employees’ PCSP to gain a competitive advantage, abusive leadership style is not helpful, especially for frontline employees.