The Role of Empathy, Customer Orientation and Work Engagement in the Relationship Between Servant Leadership and Customer-Oriented Organizational Citizenship Behaviors

Abstract

This work explores the relationship between servant leadership in the service context and the extent to which employees engage in customer-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Data were collected at two time points from 158 full-time employees, working in16 branches of a large bank in Israel. The results show that there is a positive relationship between servant leadership and customer-oriented OCB and that this relationship is mediated by employees’ levels of customer orientation and work engagement. Likewise, the relationship between servant leadership and customer orientation is stronger among employees with low levels rather than high levels of empathy.