Purpose
This paper aims to examine the influence of role stressors on service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) mediated by depersonalization, with a moderator of social capital.
Design/methodology/approach
A self-administered online survey was completed by 265 current hotel frontline employees in the USA.
Findings
The study reveals that role ambiguity has a detrimental impact on service-oriented OCB. The results show that depersonalization is found to be a critical mediator that modifies the implications of both role ambiguity and role conflict for service-oriented OCB. Furthermore, the negative effect of role conflict on depersonalization is buffered by social capital.
Practical implications
Hotel firms that would like to encourage employees to exert proactive behaviors in their jobs might benefit from developing an effective way to reduce role stressors in their jobs. However, given that such role stressors are inevitable in the workplace, hotel firms should place more emphasis on enhancing social capital as an effective way to manage role stressors in the workplace.
Originality/value
This study advances previous studies on role stressors and service-oriented OCB by addressing how and why role stressors influence employees’ service-oriented OCB. This study incorporates advanced job demand-resource theory by identifying social capital as a critical job resource to buffer the detrimental impact of role conflict on depersonalization in the hotel context.
