This study empirically examines the effects of humble leadership on service recovery performance, mediated by psychological safety, within the context of food-service operations. This research advances sustainable service management theory by identifying how leader humility and psychological safety function as durable resources that support sustainable frontline operations and organizational resilience over time. Using a structural equation model, data collected through a survey of restaurant employees reveal that humble leadership has a significant positive influence on psychological safety, facilitating a subsequent constructive impact on service recovery performance. Psychological safety, in turn, exerts a significant positive effect on service recovery performance and serves as a vital mediator in the relationship between humble leadership and service recovery performance. These results suggest that humble leadership encourages workers to respond more actively and flexibly to service failures by fostering a psychologically safe organizational environment. From a sustainability perspective, this study demonstrates that leadership-based psychological assets are critical for maintaining consistent service quality and long-term customer trust. Academically, this study expands similar research by integrating the relationship among humble leadership, psychological safety, and service recovery performance into a sustainable service management framework. Practically, the findings suggest that embedding humble leadership within the organizational culture secures long-term performance by strengthening employees’ psychological stability and autonomous problem-solving capabilities.
Lee et al. (Wed,) studied this question.