Companies in modern society cannot refuse to change and innovate to maintain a competitive advantage in the era of super-competition, despite rapid environmental changes and the incompleteness of organizational composition. Hence, attention has focused on the dedication and participation of the organization members, who are the sources of a company’s sustainable survival and competitive advantage. Moreover, factors that generate innovative ideas have received considerable attention. In this process, the leader’s behavior can have a significant impact on the behavior of the organizational members [1]; therefore, there has been much research on effective leadership [2]. Many researchers have conducted research on leadership that positively affects the performance and creativity of organization members ^[3][4][5][3,4,5].

As the business environment becomes more uncertain, leadership has evolved beyond the initial leadership theories of characteristics, behavior, and situation; one of these styles of leadership is self-sacrifice leadership ^[6][7][6,7].

The efficient performance of the organization requires its members’ voluntary participation, risk-taking, and sacrifice, as self-sacrifice leadership acts as a catalyst for their dedication, effort, and risk-taking ^[8][9][8,9]. Furthermore, the more rapid the changes in the corporate environment, the more members expect the leader’s sacrificial behavior [10]. Moreover, they hope that the leader demonstrates excellent self-sacrifice leadership for the organization’s survival and development ^[11][12][11,12]. As a result, a leader’s voluntary self-sacrifice instills self-belief in members that they can form a positive and active attitude to improve job performance and overcome difficulties even in complex environments [13]. This implies that the leader’s self-sacrifice behavior can have a significant impact on the behavior and attitude of employees.

To achieve a company’s long-term goal, various departments must perform their duties well and collaborate closely with one another. This concept is known as social capital, which promotes the specific behavior of members of the organizational structure. An organization’s intangible assets are productive and allow for creating organizational performance [14]. Hence, when social capital is formed within an organization, its members can create new values by sharing resources within the organization through cooperation and support for corporate goals and corresponding gains ^[15][16][15,16].

As a result, the self-sacrificing leadership of perceived leaders, or members of the organization, will influence the formation of attitudes toward their duties or organizations. It also exerts significant influence on social capital formed through active mutual exchanges with other members. Furthermore, the employee’s job performance depends on whether the organization has core capital [17] and how effectively it uses its capital [18]. In other words, the ability to utilize and convert intangible capital held by a company or created by its members is a critical factor in improving and maintaining a company’s competitiveness [19]. Therefore, the leader’s self-sacrifice leadership and social capital are critical requirements for the performance creation of hotel companies.

Leadership research is a topic that has long piqued the interest of many researchers [20]. Various theories and approaches to effective leadership have been proposed, particularly in organizational behavior and personnel management. For instance, Hughes et al. [21] divided leadership into leaders, members, and situations. Most leadership studies recognized three components of the leadership process: leaders, members, and situations. Moreover, many scholars have focused on effective leadership that encourages members to pursue organizational goals voluntarily [6], with self-sacrifice of the leader being recognized as a desirable and essential leadership behavior ^[22][23][22,23].

Self-sacrificing leadership is defined as sacrificial work behavior beyond the scope of work officially granted by the organization; it is the act of refraining from or giving up the use of authority or privileges granted to an employee position and the suspension or waiver of benefits granted to him/her ^[12][24][12,24]. Van Knippenberg et al. [25] defined actions taken to achieve the goals and interests of an organization or group to which an individual belongs as self-sacrifice leadership, in which individuals were at risk of losing, and those affected by this were designated as organizations’ employees.

According to previous research on self-sacrifice leadership, leaders’ self-sacrifice made members of the organization perceive their bosses as desirable leaders [26]. It demonstrated administrative outcomes that prompted additional efforts from members [27]. Furthermore, charismatic perception and trust in leaders [28], trust [29], and leadership effectiveness [30] improved self-sacrifice obligations and organizational commitment.

Social capital, which refers to networks, norms, trust, and relationship structures that promote collective action, is one of the essential core concepts in raising awareness of the interrelationship between economic outcomes and social achievement. According to Adler and Kwon [31], social capital can influence organizational members’ career success and managerial remuneration, encourage resource exchange and product innovation, reduce turnover, foster entrepreneurship, and strengthen supplier relationships, networks, and learning.

Meanwhile, Coleman [32] defined social capital as a component that rapidly shapes individual and organizational behavior within the social structure. He regarded mutual trust, norms, expectations, obligations, and information power as forms of social capital. Putnam [33] called social organization characteristics such as trust, norms, and networks that can increase social efficiency by facilitating cooperative work behavior social capital. Furthermore, Ostrom [34] defined social capital as shared understanding, clarification, rule, and knowledge of interactions that cause individuals and organizations to repeat actions. In addition, Inkpen and Tsang [35] stated that it refers to the sum of resources that arise from and are inherent in the relationship held by individuals or organizations in the network. In this way, social capital can be divided into structural and cultural aspects. In contrast, structural characteristics emphasize social network connections, whereas cultural elements emphasize trust, norms, and values [36].

Because there are various definitions of social capital, each previous study presents different perspectives on the components. For example, Putnam [33] presented network, trust, and norm as sources of social capital, and Nahapiet and Ghoshal [15] classified social capital into structural, relational, and cognitive dimensions and proposed factors for each dimension.

Among the components of social capital, trust, norms, and networks take a central position. Trust is a belief that exists between people, and in the case of organizations, it plays a critical role in sharing and communicating knowledge and information [37]. Meanwhile, the norm is a primary mechanism that promotes the organization’s culture by causing group members to act in accordance with the shared language, behavior, and goal [38]. The network functions as an infrastructure for social capital, allowing it to exist as a relationship within a group.

Job performance refers to the physical behavior of the investigator to achieve the organization’s goal [39]. From this perspective, job performance refers to actions evaluated by the organization as part of the employee’s responsibilities and duties [40].

As the organization’s need for adaptability grows, job performance is classified as task performance and contextual performance. Research on the model system of job performance progresses; thus, the concept of adaptive performance, which necessitates individual adaptability on the part of employees, emerges ^[41][42][41,42]. The performance of tasks is an official job that is specified in job descriptions. It can be defined as an action that either directly executes the organization’s core skills or indirectly performs the tasks necessary for such skills [43]. Meanwhile, contextual performance is an action that supports the organization’s social and psychological environment so that its core functions can be carried out smoothly. Adaptation performance is a concept that encompasses behaviors, abilities, and attributes that helps members comprehend the organizational environment for changing and uncertain situations and adapt accordingly [41]. As a result, job performance has evolved into a concept that encompasses various job behaviors, such as anti-productivity and organizational citizenship, including contextual and task performance that contributes to organizational effectiveness ^[44][44]. Job performance in this study is composed of three factors: adaptive performance, task performance, and contextual performance.