Workplace spirituality - customer engagement Nexus: the mediated role of spiritual leadership on customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors

Abstract

Customer engagement entails unequivocal frontline service employees' top performances and recommendable behaviors through management appropriate leadership to flourish. Under the social exchange and social identity theories, this study investigates employee customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors as an outcome of spiritual leadership, through the mediating effect of employee spiritual survival and well-being. PROCESS macro was used to analyze data collected from 5-star hotels full-time frontline employees in Antalya, Turkey. Results indicated that the effect of spiritual leadership on the three dimensions of customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors is fully mediated by spiritual survival and spiritual well-being. Spirituality appears to be a noteworthy but remote contributor to customer engagement via employees' boundary-spanning behaviors. Our study contributed to the boundary-spanning and customer engagement literature by illustrating that a sense of mission and wellbeing at the workplace are adequate requirements to engage a frontline employee, whose boundary-spanning behaviors will be instrumental in fostering customer engagement. Further detailed theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.