Purpose: – Although servant leadership (SL) improves the overall effectiveness of individuals and teams, it remains understudied. The aim of this paper is to provide insight into the mediating mechanisms through which perceived SL affects salespersons’ proactive and adaptive behaviors.Design/methodology/approach: – Data were gathered from 145 industrial salespeople and their supervisors across a variety of businesses and sectors in Spain.Findings: – SL enhances salespeople’s adaptivity and proactivity by positively affecting their self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, SL directly shapes the development of adaptive behaviors among salespeople, although this direct influence is not significant when considering proactivity. Additionally, the use of outcome-based control mechanisms enhances the positive effects of SL on salespeople’s intrinsic motivation.Practical implications: – The results demonstrate that sales managers can promote more proactive and adaptive behaviors among sales staff by recognizing the importance of service and their moral responsibilities to the success of their subordinates.Originality/value: – Cognitive evaluation theory was used to examine the direct and indirect effects of perceived SL on two emergent change-oriented behaviors (adaptivity and proactivity) using a matched sample of industrial salespeople from a variety of industries, thus providing a basis for the generalization of results. Moreover, in analyzing the moderating effects of outcome control, the conditions under which SL is more or less effective were examined.

Purpose: – The purpose of this investigation is to analyze the role of perceived organizational support (POS) and intrinsic motivation in the relationship between high-performance work systems (HPWS) and job satisfaction.Design/methodology/approach: – The sample used in this study consists of 180 engineers from 25 companies. The model entails a cross-level moderated mediation process that was tested using multilevel structural equation modeling.Findings: – This research shows that the effect of HPWS via POS on job satisfaction is stronger among engineers with low intrinsic motivation than engineers with high intrinsic motivation.Practical implications: – Given the findings of this paper, organizations are advised to consider the importance of HPWS perceptions and intrinsic motivation to help strengthen engineer satisfaction.Originality/value: – This is the first study to provide evidence for the mediating effect of POS in the relationship between employees’ shared perceptions of the HPWS implemented at their companies and their job satisfaction, and the moderating role of employee intrinsic motivation in the relationship between POS resulting from HPWS and job satisfaction.

Purpose – Due to the importance of understanding what circumstances make customer recovery programmes successful, this paper aims to study the effects of different cognitive evaluations (disconfirmation of expectations and perceived justice) and affective responses (positive and negative emotions) on satisfaction with complaint handling. Design/methodology/approach – The sample used in this study consists of 679 subjects who, over the last six months, had experienced service failures and had afterwards complained. The data were collected via personal interviews using a structured survey. Findings – The results of the study support the model and highlight the importance of the emotions experienced as a result of the complaint handling. Although these emotions have been underrepresented in the service recovery literature, our investigation shows that these emotions not only have an independent effect on customer satisfaction, after accounting for the effects of the cognitive evaluations of complaint handling, but also play a mediating role in the relationship between these cognitive variables and satisfaction. Research limitations/implications – This study examines only one service context; consequently, caution is needed when generalizing the results. Practical implications – Given the findings in this paper, identifying customers' emotions can enable service organizations to know their perceptions of the recovery and, hence, adapt service recovery strategies adequately. Originality/value – This study incorporates the disconfirmation of expectations paradigm and the dimension of informational justice into the existing models of cognitive and affective antecedents of satisfaction with complaint handling. Furthermore, this study is based on the analysis of real service failures and recovery strategies.

Mobile banking is an innovative solution for improving financial inclusion; however, the use of this technology is still very limited in developing countries. Consequently, this study aims to investigate elements affecting mobile banking adoption in a developing country context by applying the well-known Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology two (UTAUT2) model. Since most existing investigations on mobile banking using the UTAUT2 neglect the effects of personality traits, this investigation extends the UTAUT2 with a new antecedent not considered in previous studies, the consumer proactive personality. This study empirically tests the proposed partial mediation model using path analysis with data collected from Lebanese bank customers who are current non-users of mobile banking. Results show a full mediation model, confirming that some UTAUT2 drivers fully mediate the effect that proactive personality has on consumer intention to adopt mobile banking and highlighting the relevance of proactive personality on all UTAUT2 drivers. This study expands the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology two and examines how a personality trait—proactive personality—relates to mobile banking adoption through the UTAUT2 perceptions in a developing country context.

In the marketing literature, there is a great interest in learning how companies should behave after a service failure. From this perspective, different service recovery strategies have been proposed. This experimental study of the airline industry deals with this topic, indicating the benefits of carrying out, after a service failure, a financial compensation and/or an explanation based on social comparison. The results indicate when financial compensation and social comparison increase satisfaction and when they have a positive impact on different behaviour intentions (repurchase intentions, positive or negative word of mouth communication, and complaints to the company and/or third parties). There predictions on the effects of the service recovery strategies are developed on the basis of failure stability and the emotions (anger) brought on by it.