Effects of Transformational Leadership and Intrinsic Motivations on Organizational Innovation in Hotels and Travel Agencies: The Mediating Roles of Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Organizational Commitment

This study examines the cause-effect relationships among transformational leadership (TFL), intrinsic motivations (IMs), and organizational innovation (OI), mediated through organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and organizational commitment (OC) in Egyptian hotels and travel agents. Such an investigation may aid in filling a leadership research gap in a developing country like Egypt. The Leader-Member Exchange theory, reflected in TFL, was employed as the theoretical foundation of this study. A quantitative design that aligns with such causal connections was developed through a questionnaire survey distributed to a convenience sample of supervisors. Data from 382 hotel respondents and 315 travel agency respondents (n = 697) comprised relevant employees and were collected between March and July 2022. Nine hypotheses are postulated and examined quantitatively using the PLS-SEM technique. The results revealed that: (1) TFL has positively affected OCB, OC, and IMs; (2) IMs have positively affected OCB and OC; (3) OCB and OC have positively affected OI; and (4) OCB and OC act as partial mediators between TFL, IMs, and OI. The study's main contribution is modelling the relationship among the investigated variables in the Egyptian T&H sector. Our study confirms the importance of dyadic interaction between leaders and their followers. Practitioners should exploit a high-quality TFL to obtain favourable employee outcomes, leading to high levels of organizational goals. The study presents the TFL style as a mechanism for generating positive intrinsic attitudes and promoting employees’ innovation intentions. Further research can use our results to expand leadership appraisals from other perspectives.