Why do they slack off in teamwork? Understanding frontline hospitality employees? social loafing when faced with exploitative leadership

Social loafing is a detrimental phenomenon prevalent in hospitality industry. We propose that the exploitative leadership, characterized by self-interested behavior of leaders, may be a critical trigger of frontline hospitality employees' social loafing. According to social identity theory, we examine the mediating role of perceived insider status (PIS) and the moderating role of perceived organizational support (POS) in the linkage between exploitative leadership and employees' social loafing. Results based on time-lagged data of 264 frontline hos-pitality employees revealed that exploitative leadership was positively related to social loafing, and such rela-tionship was mediated by employees' PIS. Our findings also demonstrated that POS can serve as a cross-domain buffer against the direct harm of exploitative leadership on PIS and can weaken the positive indirect relationship between exploitative leadership and employees' social loafing. Implications for researchers and practitioners in hospitality industry are also discussed within this study.