# From leadership humility to customer satisfaction: a study of employee engagement in the Chinese service industry

## TL;DR

This study explores how humble leadership improves employee engagement and customer satisfaction in China's service industry.

## Contribution

The paper integrates LMX and SDT frameworks to define and empirically validate humble leadership's impact in the Chinese service industry context.

## Key findings

- Leadership humility, relational empowerment, and psychological safety significantly predict employee engagement.
- Employee engagement strongly influences service performance, which in turn affects customer satisfaction.
- Autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs of employees are positively linked to engagement.

## Abstract

The study proposes to integrate Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to study Humble Leadership (HL) impact on Employee engagement, Service Performance and Customer satisfaction in the Chinese service industry.

A quantitative approach used purposive sampling, including 485 participants from organizations in the Chinese service industry. The data was further processed and tested through a PLS-SEM procedure to check the hypothesized relationships.

Results of the study prove that leadership humility (LHU; β = 0.224, p < 0.001), relational empowerment (REM; β = 0.186, p < 0.001), and psychological safety (PSA; β = 0.138, p = 0.003) could be identified as critical antecedents of employee engagement (EEN). Additionally, autonomy support (AUS; β = 0.135, p = 0.001), competence development (CDE; β = 0.345, p < 0.001), and relatedness fulfillment (REF; β = 0.126, p < 0.001) significantly influence engagement positively. Moreover, employee engagement (β = 0.757, p < 0.001) has a profound impact on service performance, which in turn dramatically affects customer satisfaction (β = 0.477, p < 0.001). The study confirms employee engagement (β = 0.406, p < 0.001) as a driver of service performance and customer satisfaction within the service industry context.

The study results propose practical suggestions for managers and leaders in the service industry as Organizations should develop humble leadership behaviors, empowering, and creating psychological safety while satisfying employees’ needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

The study helps in defining humble leadership as it integrates LMX and SDT frameworks in the context of the Chinese service industry. The study thus provides empirical evidence as to how humble leadership and employee engagement jointly work in the direction of better service performance and customer outcomes, consequently contributing to the literature on both leadership and service management.