Ambidextrous Leadership and Service Recovery Performance Under B2B Selling Context: An Examination Through Service Innovation Capability

Abstract

In order to build consistent service quality, managers should encourage salespeople to deal with customers and improve service errors for their overall benefit. Our study seeks to understand the role of ambidextrous leadership in promoting service innovation capability and service recovery performance (SRP) under a business-to-business (B2B) selling environment. The study evaluates 286 responses from pharmaceutical salespeople by using structural equation modeling. The results report a significant association between opening leader behavior and service recovery performance, whereas closing leader behavior is not significantly related to service recovery performance. In addition, opening and closing leader behaviors have a positive and significant impact on service innovation capability. Consequently, service innovation capability is positively and significantly related to value-based selling, adaptive selling, and service recovery performance. Finally, our results contribute to the previous research that has explored the significant mediation effect of service innovation capability between opening leader behavior and service recovery performance linkage.