Service Performance at Altitude: Cross-Level Effects of Team-Directed Empowering Leadership

We proposed and tested a cross-level model of the interplay of the relational resources of team-directed empowering leadership, shared organizational social exchange, and customer orientation on service performance through the motivational pathway of thriving at work. Data were obtained from flight attendants and their in-flight supervisors from a major Asian airline (N=283). With the exception of two moderated mediation paths, the results generally supported our proposed model. First, team-directed empowering leadership and customer orientation both related to service performance through thriving at work. Second, high customer orientation substituted for the effect of team-directed empowering leadership on thriving at work such that team-directed empowering leadership was significantly related to thriving at work for low but not high customer orientation employees. Lastly, shared organizational social exchange moderated the direct cross-level influence of team-directed empowering leadership on service pe...