The effect of servant leadership on customer value co-creation: A cross-level analysis of key mediating roles

• This study ascertains the effects of servant leadership on customer value co-creation.
• Mediators of positive psychological capital and service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior are investigated.
• Three levels of organization, employee, and customer are integrated to conduct a cross-level analysis.
• Hierarchical linear model is adopted for the cross-level analysis.

This study ascertained the effects of servant leadership on customer value co-creation (CVC) through key mediating roles in the hotel industry. We systematically integrated the three levels of organization, employee, and customer to investigate how servant leadership stimulates CVC through the key mediating roles of the positive psychological capital (PPC) and service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (SOOCB) of employees. Hierarchical linear models were adopted for cross-level analyses, targeting 30 hotels in Taiwan. A total of 650 questionnaires was distributed, and 493 valid questionnaires were retrieved. This study provided three major contributions: (a) This study asserted that servant leadership can systematically stimulate CVC. (b) We shifted the discussions on CVC to the hotel industry, verifying that PPC and SOOCB play the key mediating roles. (c) Finally, this study adopted hierarchical linear models to conduct a cross-level analysis on the relationships among organizations, employees, and customers.