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Drawing from self-determination theory, this study aims to examine the effect of leader humor on frontline hospitality employees’ service performance and proactive customer service performance (PCSP) via harmonious passion (HP) for work with employee neuroticism as the moderating mechanism.

This study controlled for the nested effect and tested all the hypotheses with Mplus 7.0 using a time-lagged three-wave survey of 232 Chinese supervisor–subordinate dyads.

The results indicated that leader humor promotes frontline hospitality employees’ service performance and PCSP by enhancing their HP. Furthermore, neuroticism was shown to strengthen the direct impact of leader humor on employee HP and its indirect impact on employee service performance and employee PCSP through HP.

First, this research contributes to the leader humor literature through exploring its impact on the service performance and PCSP of frontline hospitality employees. Second, this research develops a new framework to explain the leader humor-employee service outcomes relationship using self-determination theory. Finally, the focus on the moderating role of neuroticism helps to explain the “when” question of leader humor.

Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to explore how perceived organizational exploitation affects hospitality employees’ extra-role customer service behaviors by investigating the mediating role of depressed mood at work and the moderating role of reappraisal.

This study tested all of the hypotheses using multilevel path analyses with a sample of 340 supervisor–subordinate dyads.

The results show that perceived organizational exploitation is indirectly associated with hospitality employees’ extra-role customer service through depressed mood at work and that employees’ reappraisal may help mitigate the negative effect of organizational exploitation.

First, policies and rules should be established in advance to prevent organizational exploitation. Second, we suggest that hospitality organizations should pay special attention to employees who have low levels of reappraisal, and reappraisal training could be provided to enhance their emotion regulation skills. Third, hospitality organizations could nurture a healthy and supportive emotional climate to create positive emotions in the workplace, in case that depressed mood at work contributes to employees’ extra-role behaviors.

First, the authors go beyond previous studies to focus on a new behavioral outcome of perceived organizational exploitation, i.e. extra-role customer service. Second, it applies a new perspective of COR theory to determine the underlying mechanism of perceived organizational exploitation. Third, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to explore the boundary conditions under which the destructive effects of perceived organizational exploitation can be mitigated.