Enhancing innovative work behavior through transformational leadership in tourism and hospitality employees: the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and employee creativity

Innovative work behaviors have become essential for the existence and competitiveness of businesses in today's corporate environment. The present study focuses on the function of transformational leadership in the employees' innovative work behaviors in response to this pressing need. This study also emphasizes the significance of intrinsic motivation (IM) and employee creativity (EC) regarding mediating the relationship between transformational leadership (TL) and innovative work behaviors (IWB). The research's target population included China's tourism and hospitality industries in three major tourism and hospitality hubs. Non-probability convenience sampling was employed to collect the data. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to evaluate the theoretical model and test the postulated hypotheses. According to the results, transformational leadership has a favorable and significant effect on employee creativity and innovative work behaviors. Furthermore, intrinsic motivation partially mediates the associations between transformational leadership and EC, whereas intrinsic motivation and employee creativity fully mediate the association between transformational leadership and IWB. The findings suggest essential directions for tourism and hospitality business managers to consider, recommending several approaches to enhance employees' creativity and innovative work behaviors through their attitudes.