Fire with smoke: Exploitative leadership, anxiety, and service sabotage in the hotel industry

Abstract

Using cognitive–motivational–relational theory as the theoretical focus, our paper develops and tests a research model that investigates workplace anxiety and work alienation as the serial mediators of the influence of exploitative leadership (EL) on service sabotage. Data were collected from hotel frontline employees (FLEs) with a time lag of one month and their supervisors. The hypotheses were assessed via the PROCESS macro. The results reveal that EL exacerbates workplace anxiety, which in turn leads to FLEs’ service sabotage. The results further demonstrate that work alienation mediates the link between EL and service sabotage. As hypothesized, the EL-service sabotage relationship is serially mediated by workplace anxiety and work alienation. Our research contributes to the hospitality and dark leadership literatures by denoting workplace anxiety and work alienation as the underlying processes through which exploitative leaders trigger employees’ service sabotage.