Does Servant Leadership Promote Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Citizenship Behavior among Employees? A Structural Analysis

The requisite role of emotional intelligence in customer service in the retail banking sector

Purpose

This study aims to descriptively identify and refine the role of emotional intelligence (EI) in the retail banking employee–customer contact context, and prescriptively use this knowledge to develop a framework for improving true customer service without excess organizational cost, in Lebanon.

Design/methodology/approach

The research adopts the classical interpretive/constructivist ontology and the interpretivism/constructivism epistemology, and it rests on a tripod of methodological foundations. The first leg is the theoretical work that sets the extant scientific ground for the empirical work to develop. The second incorporates the main (qualitative) empirical tools, i.e. 40 interviews with customers and HR managers (NVivo-analyzed), plus a critical incident technique study. The third includes the supportive tools of secondary data and an expert panel composed of industry and scholarly specialists.

Findings

EI was empirically shown to modulate the levels of customer satisfaction and to hold a critical role in the company–customer interface, albeit one that is currently and unjustly both undervalued and ineffectively controlled. The findings identify the key factors and exhibited behavioral attributes of EI within the customer service process, and they integrate all into a comprehensive framework of both scholarly and executive worth.

Originality/value

This study provides distinct theoretical elucidations and conceptualization that have identified and interrelated the relevant works on the subject; empirically refines the variables involved in the EI context of retail banking customer service; and culminates in the form of the proposed framework that incorporates and interrelates the findings into an empirical-data-based composition of both scholarly and executive orientation and worth.

Relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility, Organizational Trust, and Corporate Reputation for Sustainable Performance

In the current study, the authors looked at how companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives affect their reputation in the community using the stakeholder theory. More specifically, it is claimed that CSR initiatives with a particular focus on employees help firms create employee trust, which is an essential component of organizational long-term sustainable performance. Administrative fairness as a boundary condition bolsters the relationship between corporate reputation and trust. A non-probability convenience sampling technique was used to poll Chinese restaurant managers and non-managers on a 5-point Likert scale. Structural equation modeling was used to conduct structural analyses. CSR is a significant predictor of business reputation in the Chinese restaurant industry. It has also been discovered that trust in the organization is a partial mediator between the two. Furthermore, the data show that organizational justice moderates trust in the organization and the company’s reputation. This research examines the relationship between internal stakeholders’ perceptions of CSR activities and the company’s reputation, i.e., employees, for the first time. The findings provide vital information for restaurant management to boost their reputation in the market by engaging in E-CSR activities to strengthen their internal stakeholders.