at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Tourism Management 40 (2014) 79e89
Contents lists available
Tourism Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ tourman
Linking transformational leadership and employee creativity in thehospitality industry: The influences of creative role identity, creativeself-efficacy, and job complexity
Chung-Jen Wang a,*, Huei-Ting Tsai a, Ming-Tien Tsai b
aDepartment of Business Administration, National Cheng Kung University, No. 1, University Road, Tainan City 70100, TaiwanbCollege of Commerce, Wuyi University, No. 16, Wuyi Road, Wuyishan, Fujian 354300, China
h i g h l i g h t s
� A model links leadership and creativity in the hospitality industry.� Based on 395 supervisoreemployee dyadic data from international tourist hotels in Taiwan.� Transformational leadership has positive influences on employee creativity.� Creative role identity and creative self-efficacy are mediators in the proposed model.� Job complexity is a moderator in the proposed model.
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:Received 6 December 2012Accepted 20 May 2013
Keywords:Transformational leadershipCreativityCreative role identityCreative self-efficacyJob complexity
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ886 6 2757575x533E-mail address: [email protected] (C.-J. Wan
0261-5177/$ e see front matter � 2013 Elsevier Ltd.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2013.05.008
a b s t r a c t
Integrating transformational leadership, creativity and social cognitive theories, we explore the re-lationships among transformational leadership, creative role identity, creative self-efficacy, jobcomplexity and creativity. Structural equation modeling (SEM) with bootstrapping estimation wasconducted using data from 395 supervisoreemployee dyads from international tourist hotels in Taiwan.The results show that supervisors’ transformational leadership positively influenced employee creativeself-efficacy and creativity. Moreover, creative role identity was found to mediate the relationship be-tween transformational leadership and employee creative self-efficacy, while both creative role identityand creative self-efficacy were found to mediate the relationship between transformational leadershipand employee creativity. Specifically, job complexity was found to moderate the relationship betweentransformational leadership and employee creative role identity, the relationship between employeecreative role identity and creative self-efficacy, and the relationship between employee creative self-efficacy and creativity. We discuss the implications of these results for research and practice in hospi-tality context.
� 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
As people spend more time to improve their leisure lives, firmsin the hospitality industry are now immersed in a highlycompetitive environment and need a more creative work-force toprovide high quality services (Claver-Cortes, Molina-Azorin, &Pereira-Moliner, 2006). Therefore, an increasing amount ofattention has been paid to exploring the antecedents of employeecreativity, which is required to generate novel ideas for newproducts, services and process, especially in the field of hospitality
21; fax: þ886 6 2080179.g).
All rights reserved.
research (Amabile, Barsade, Mueller, & Staw, 2005; Horng & Lee,2009; Robinson & Beesley, 2010; Wong & Ladkin, 2008; Wong &Pang, 2003). For example, leadership behavior, such as thathighlighted in transformational leadership theory, has beenexamined for its links with employee creativity (Shin & Zhou,2003). Transformational supervisors motivate employees to ach-ieve goals by higher-level self-reinforcement, instead of bydeveloping reciprocal exchange relationships with them (Bass,Avolio, & Goodheim, 1987; Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999). In contrastto a focus on external rewards, transformational leadership adoptsapproaches consistent with social cognitive theory (Bandura,1986), and supports the view that self-regulation is the mainmotivator to foster specific employee behaviors. As a result, thefirst objective of this study was to integrate the theories of
H7H6H5
H1
H4H3
Transformational leadership
Creativity Creative role identity
Creative self-efficacy
H2
Age
Education
Gender
Tenure
Control Variables
Job complexity
Fig. 1. The hypothesized model.
C.-J. Wang et al. / Tourism Management 40 (2014) 79e8980
transformational leadership and creativity in the context of thehospitality industry.
In addition to investigating the contribution of transformationalleadership to employee creativity, a review of the literature showsthat few recent studies have emphasized the importance of thecritical mediators between these two variables. Using a socialcognitive theory perspective (Bandura, 1986; Bandura & Locke,2003), Tierney and Farmer (2011) demonstrated that creative roleidentity and creative self-efficacy are positively related to employeecreativity. Creative role identity reflects whether an individualviews himself/herself as a creative person (Farmer, Tierney, & Kung-McIntyre, 2003), and creative self-efficacy reflects to what degreean individual believe he/she has the ability to produce creativeoutcomes (Tierney & Farmer, 2002). Based on these earlier works,we adopted creative role identity and creative self-efficacy as twomediators between transformational leadership and individualcreativity in a three-path mediation model. Meanwhile, we alsofurther developed an integrated theory by testing this long medi-ating chain. According to the results based on data from 395 su-pervisoreemployee dyads from international tourist hotels inTaiwan, transformational leadership has significant direct in-fluences on employee creative self-efficacy and creativity, and atthe same time, has a significant indirect influence on employeecreative self-efficacy via the mediator of creative role identity, aswell as has a significant indirect influence on employee creativityvia the mediators of both creative role identity and creative self-efficacy.
Moreover, as job complexity is an important contextual factorthat influences employee creativity (Oldham & Cummings, 1996),employees in complex jobs tend to express greater intrinsicmotivation to foster creativity than those in routine and simplejobs (Amabile, 1988; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Shalley, Zhou, &Oldham, 2004). The results of our empirical study indicate thatthere are stronger relationships between transformational lead-ership and creative role identity for front line group than for backoffice group, as well as between creative role identity and crea-tive self-efficacy, and between creative self-efficacy and crea-tivity. In other words, employees in complex jobs, such as frontline work, can have more recognition of their creative roleidentity, more confidence in their creative self-efficacy, and abetter focus on creative ideas, while those in routine jobs, suchas back office work, may have less recognition of their creativerole identity, less confidence in their creative self-efficacy, andhave more constraints with regard to the development ofcreativity.
Overall, this study contributes to the literature by conceptuallyand empirically linking transformational leadership, creativity andsocial cognitive theories using the variables of transformationalleadership, creative role identity, creative self-efficacy, creativity,and job complexity in an integrated model. The results of thisresearch also add to a more comprehensive understanding oftransformational leadership as it relates to employee creativeoutcomes in the context of hospitality.
2. Theory and hypotheses
This section first examines the direct effects of transformationalleadership on employee creative self-efficacy and creativity. It thenexamines the linkages and indirect influences among trans-formational leadership, creative role identity, creative self-efficacy,and employee creativity. Finally, it investigates the moderatingroles of job complexity in the relationships between trans-formational leadership and creative role identity, between creativerole identity and creative self-efficacy, and between creative self-efficacyandcreativity. Thehypothesizedmodel is illustrated in Fig.1.
2.1. Transformational leadership and creativity
Creativity means the capability to produce novel ideas oreffective solutions to problems (Amabile, 1983, 1988), and organi-zations with creative employees can thus create extra value andmaintain competition advantages in a dynamic business environ-ment (Amabile et al., 2005; Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, &Herron, 1996; George, 2007). Since the field of hospitality is laborintensive, it is necessary to have a more creative work-force todeliver better knowledge-intensive business services to travelersand achieve high levels of customer satisfaction (Mohsin & Lockyer,2010; Robinson & Beesley, 2010; Wong & Pang, 2003). In addition,recent studies suggest that work environment factors, such asstyles of leadership, may influence the creative behaviors of em-ployees (Amabile, Schatzel, Moneta, & Kramer, 2004; Shalley &Gilson, 2004). Burns (1978) proposed that leadership can betransactional or transformational leadership. Supervisors withtransactional leadership can influence their employees by estab-lishing clear goals and providing valuable rewards in a reciprocalexchange relationship, while supervisors with transformationalleadership can influence their employees by broadening estab-lished goals and helping to boost their confidence at work (Bass,1990; Dvir, Eden, Avolio, & Shamir, 2002). Moreover, Bass andSteidlmeier (1999) theorized that transformational leadership iscomposed of four behaviors: idealized influence, inspirationalmotivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consider-ation. Idealized influence, or charisma, refers to a leader being acharismatic role model for employees, positively affecting theirperceptions and behaviors. Inspirational motivation refers to aleader fostering employees’ desire to work cooperatively toaccomplish a collective goal. Intellectual stimulation refers to aleader inspiring the questioning of assumptions, reframing prob-lems, and stimulating employees by raising their intellectual curi-osity and encouraging the adoption of novel approaches. Finally,individualized consideration involves understanding and appreci-ating the development and needs of different employees (Basset al., 1987; Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999; Sosik, Avolio, & Kahai, 1997).
The transformational leadership style can thus provide em-ployees with useful feedback, encourage them to make additionalefforts to achieve novel solutions, and boost their intrinsic motiva-tion to think creatively (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Shin & Zhou,2003; Sosik et al., 1997). Most important of all, supervisors with atransformational leadership style can motivate employees to ach-ieve goals by higher-level self-reinforcement, instead of by devel-oping reciprocal exchange relationshipswith them (Bass et al.,1987;Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999). Accordingly, Amabile et al. (2004) pro-posed that leader behavior is a key feature of thework environmentfor creativity, while these definitions imply that transformational
C.-J. Wang et al. / Tourism Management 40 (2014) 79e89 81
leadership can positively influence employees’ creativity, as it pro-motes employee motivation to challenge old ways of doing things(Gong, Huang, & Farh, 2009; Shin& Zhou, 2003). In addition, asfirmsin the hospitality industry aim to increase the satisfaction of cus-tomers, transformational supervisors can encourage the desire ofcreative people to provide better quality services, and thus help todevelop and maintain competitive advantages (Mohsin & Lockyer,2010; Ogaard, Marnburg, & Larsen, 2008). For instance, Gong et al.(2009) found that individual learning orientation and trans-formational leadership were positively related to creativity, andthese relationships were mediated by employee creative self-efficacy. Sosik et al. (1997) evaluated the effects of different leader-ship styles in a longitudinal laboratory experiment, and the resultsindicated that transformational leadership hadmorepositive effectson group effectiveness than transactional leadership. Similarly,Gumusluoglu and Ilsev (2009) proposed that transformationalleadership has positively impacts onboth the individual creativityofemployees and organizational innovation. Since a number ofempirical studies have provided firm evidence of a strong correla-tion between transformational leadership and individual creativity,we propose the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1. Transformational leadership is positively related toemployee creativity.
2.2. Transformational leadership and creative self-efficacy
Based on social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), Tierney andFarmer (2002) developed the concept of creative self-efficacy, andthis refers to the degree towhich individuals’ believe in their abilityto generate creative outcomes. As self-efficacy in creative activitiesis a key attribute of being creative at work, employees can thusincrease engagement in creative behavior when they feel a highlevel of confidence in their self-efficacy for creativity (Gong et al.,2009; Tierney & Farmer, 2002, 2011). Prior studies have sug-gested that leadership style can be one of the contextual factors toenhance creativity related activities (Amabile et al., 2005; Shalley &Gilson, 2004). Moreover, transformational leadership adopts ap-proaches that are consistent with social cognitive theory (Bandura,1986), and supports the view that self-regulation is the one of themain motivators to promote specific employee behaviors. As aresult, it is possible that transformational leadership raises em-ployees’ independent thinking abilities via enhancing their creativeself-efficacy (Gong et al., 2009; Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009). Fromthis perspective, supervisors with transformational leadership inservice organizations can thus stimulate employees’ confidence tosuccessfully achieve knowledge-intensive business services withmore creative thinking and novel approaches (Bass & Steidlmeier,1999; Wong & Pang, 2003). For example, Walumbwa and Hartnell(2011) examined a sample of 426 employees from a large auto-mobile dealership, and the results showed the existence of positiverelationships between transformational leadership and self-efficacy, and thus increased employee performance. Hon (2011)adopted a multi-level analysis and found social-contextual vari-ables, such as transformational leadership, were positively associ-ated with employee self-concordance of creativity based on hotelindustry data in Mainland China. Similarly, Gong et al. (2009) foundemployee learning orientation and transformational leadershipwere positively related to employee creative self-efficacy in a sur-vey of 200 insurance agents. These results suggest that employeecreative self-efficacy is strongly and positively affected by trans-formational leadership, and thus we propose the followinghypothesis:
Hypothesis 2. Transformational leadership is positively related toemployee creative self-efficacy.
2.3. The mediating roles of creative role identity and creative self-efficacy
Creative role identity is an individual’s self-identification as acreative person, and thinking of this as a central component of his/her job (Farmer et al., 2003; Tierney & Farmer, 2011). According toFarmer et al. (2003), employees with a creative role identity can bemore creative at work and active at finding novel solutions to theproblems they face. In addition, transformational supervisorsinspire employees to accomplish a collective goal by raising theirintellectual curiosity and encouraging them to adopt novel ap-proaches with high self-reinforcement instead of external rewards(Bass et al., 1987; Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999). As a result, how peoplesee their capabilities is partially based on how well they think theycan perform a certain task (Gist & Mitchell, 1992), and the trans-formational style of leadership can encourage employees by sup-porting a strong sense of self-identity in the organization, thuspromoting creative outcomes (Paulsen, Maldonado, Callan, &Ayoko, 2009). Most important of all, the major focus of the hospi-tality industry is to deliver excellent services and meet the expec-tations of customers (Hu, Kandampully, & Juwaheer, 2009), and theidentification of being a creative employee can be positivelyinfluenced by the role model of a charismatic leader, and enablepeople to reframe problems and have the intellectual curiosityneeded to develop novel ideas to serve customers (Chang, Gong, &Shum, 2011; Wong & Ladkin, 2008). A number of studies provideempirical support for the idea that transformational leadershipenhances the development of creative role identity. First, Hirst, VanDick, and Van Knippenberg (2009) found that inspirational moti-vation from a leader, particularly with a transformational leader-ship one, can boost positive identification and creative effort, basedon ratings data from a sample of 115 employeeeleader pairs.Paulsen et al. (2009) also reported that employee sense of identitycan be positively influenced by supervisors with a more trans-formational style, based on a survey of 178 members from 34teams.
In addition, identity and efficacy are both complicated self-perceptions and beliefs that operate in concert with goal systemswithin the social cognitive theory of self-regulation (Bandura,1986;Bandura & Locke, 2003). Burke and Reitzes (1981) stated that effi-cacy is derived from identity, and identity promotes the develop-ment of efficacy. Specifically, creative role identity reflects whetheran employee views himself/herself as a creative person (Farmeret al., 2003), and creative self-efficacy reflects to what degree anemployee believe he/she has the capability to produce creativeoutcomes (Tierney & Farmer, 2002). Consequently, individuals witha strong creative role identity will pay more attention to novel in-formation, and thus enhance their creative self-efficacy, as theybelieve they are creative individuals, while individuals with highlevels of self-efficacy have more confidence in their creative per-formance, based on their previous successful experiences of beingcreative employees (Tierney & Farmer, 2011). Most important of all,when service employees with this personal trait of self-identity as acreative person and have a tendency toward self-enforcement ef-ficacy with regard to providing better creative services, they canthus utilize more creativity at work and so increase customersatisfaction (Karatepe, Uludag, Menevis, Hadzimehmedagic, &Baddar, 2006; Maroudas, Kyriakidou, & Vachari, 2008). There isthus, considerable evidence that identity can affect self-efficacy,and several scholars have called for a closer examination of theidentity behaviors that might be closely related to self-efficacy,which can lead to greater creativity. For instance, Gushue, Clarke,Pantzer, and Scanlan (2006) indicated that higher levels ofengagement in identity are related to greater decision-making self-efficacy. Tierney and Farmer (2011) also found that increases in
C.-J. Wang et al. / Tourism Management 40 (2014) 79e8982
employee creative role identity over a six-month period were alsorelated to an improved sense of employee self-efficacy with regardto creative work.
Moreover, creativity is regarded as one way to obtain andmaintain competitive advantages, and successful implementationof creativity relies on developing novel ideas beyond their originalstate (Amabile et al., 1996). Therefore, creative employees canproduce novel ideas for new products, services and processes(Amabile, 1983, 1988), while employees with creative self-efficacycan have more confidence with their ability to mobilize thecognitive resources, and greater motivation to implement specifictasks (Bandura & Cervone, 1983). Using a social cognitive theoryperspective, employee creative self-efficacy is positively related to aperson’s creative behavior at work (Bandura, 1986; Bandura &Locke, 2003). More specifically, a sense of self-efficacy in creativeactivities can help to remove inherent obstacles to creativeengagement (Gist & Mitchell, 1992; Tierney & Farmer, 2011), andemployee with a high level of creative self-efficacy tend to be morecreative at work, and thus have higher levels of creative workinvolvement (Gong et al., 2009; Tierney & Farmer, 2011). Accord-ingly, creative self-efficacy can motivate individuals to overcomethe obstacles they face (Tierney & Farmer, 2002), and help em-ployees to look for creative solutions to successfully carry out theirtasks (Bandura & Locke, 2003). Most important of all, as the natureof service organizations is providing quality services to satisfycustomers, the belief of employees that they are able to generatecreative outcomes can increase their creative performance, andthus boost the delivery of high quality services, helping the firm tomaintain profitability (Karatepe et al., 2006; Maroudas et al., 2008;Wong & Pang, 2003). In support of this view, recent research hasfound that creative self-efficacy is positively associated withemployee creativity (Binnewies, Sonnentag, & Mojza, 2009). Forexample, Liao, Liu, and Loi (2010) found a positive relationshipbetween creativity and efficacy from a sample of cross-levelmultisource data from 828 employees on 116 teams. Carmeli andSchaubroeck (2007) also reported that stronger perceived self-efficacy positively influence individuals’ creative involvement atwork.
Integrating these findings, supervisors who adopt a trans-formational leadership style could positively influence their em-ployees’ creative self-efficacy through their creative role identity,and positively influence their employees’ creativity through theircreative role identity and creative self-efficacy. Most important ofall, these earlier studies demonstrate that employee creative roleidentity has a mediating role between the independent variable oftransformational leadership and the dependent outcome variableof employee creative self-efficacy, while employee creative roleidentity and creative self-efficacy both have mediating roles be-tween transformational leadership and employee creativity.Accordingly, this study proposes the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 3. Employee creative role identity mediates the effect oftransformational leadership on employee creative self-efficacy.
Hypothesis 4. Employee creative role identity and creative self-efficacy mediate the effect of transformational leadership onemployee creativity.
2.4. The moderating role of job complexity
Job complexity plays a vital role in employee creativity (Oldham& Cummings, 1996). More specifically, when employees havecomplex and challenging tasks which are characterized by highautonomy, identity, feedback, skill variety and significance, theytend to express greater intrinsic motivation to develop creative
outcomes than those carrying out routine and simple tasks(Amabile, 1988; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Shalley et al., 2004).Moreover, the hotel industry provides many very different jobswhich are characterized by different levels of job complexity. Forexample, front line employees have the most direct contact withcustomers and require more autonomy and skill variety at work,while back office workers deal with more routine jobs and havefewer interactions with customers. Though supervisors with atransformational leadership style can provide support andencouragement for employees to make additional efforts to achievenovel solutions, employees in different jobs may have differentperformances with regard to creativity. In particular, employees incomplex jobs, such as front line work, can have a more creative roleidentity with regard to being creative workers, have more creativeself-efficacy and a high level of confidence in their creativity, andthus act more creatively in their jobs. However, employees inroutine jobs, such as back office work, may have less recognition oftheir creative role identity, have lower levels of confidence in theircreative self-efficacy, and have more constraints with regard to thedevelopment of their creativity. Prior studies have providedempirical support for these arguments. For instance, Wang andCheng (2010) showed that employees with more job complexityand autonomy can enhance the positive relationship betweenleadership and creative role identity, based on a sample of 167supervisor and employee dyads. Tierney and Farmer (2002) foundthat the joint influences of job complexity and supervisor behaviorcan foster employee creative self-efficacy, based on a survey of 536full-time employees. Shalley, Gilson and Blum (2009) also revealedthat job complexity can strengthen employee creative performanceusing a survey of 1430 workers in the United States. Similarly, wepropose that job complexity can enhance the positive relationshipbetween transformational leadership and employee creative roleidentity, foster the positive relationship between employee creativerole identity and creative self-efficacy, and strengthen the positiverelationship between employee creative self-efficacy and creativity.Therefore, we present the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 5. The positive relationship between transformationalleadership and employee creative role identity is stronger amongemployees in front line jobs versus those in back office jobs.
Hypothesis 6. The positive relationship between employee creativerole identity and creative self-efficacy is stronger among employees infront line jobs versus those in back office jobs.
Hypothesis 7. The positive relationship between employee creativeself-efficacy and creativity is stronger among employees in front linejobs versus those in back office jobs.
3. Methods
3.1. Research setting and participants
This study used data drawn from employees who work in in-ternational tourist hotels in Taiwan. The entire questionnaire wastranslated from English to Chinese and then back-translated toEnglish by two independent bilingual scholars to ensure translationquality and guarantee equivalence of meaning (Brislin, 1970). Toreduce the potential influences of common method variance(CMV), in which variances are subject to the method of measure-ment rather than to the constructs the measures represent(Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003), we collected datafrom different sources: employees and their supervisors. Managersof the human resources (HR) departments in 25 international ho-tels were thus contacted by the authors to ascertain their willing-ness to join this study. The HR managers of 14 hotels agreed to
Table 1Fit indices.
Fit indices Modelvalue
Referencevalue
Overallmodel fit
c2/df 3.63 <5.00 YesCFI 0.92 >0.90 YesIFI 0.92 >0.90 YesTLI 0.91 >0.90 YesStandardized
RMR0.05 <0.05 Yes
RMSEA 0.05 <0.10 YesNCP 700.22 >NCP saturated (.00) Yes
<NCP independence(8240.94)
FMIN 2.86 >FMIN saturated (.00) Yes<FMIN independence(22.10)
C.-J. Wang et al. / Tourism Management 40 (2014) 79e89 83
provide lists of supervisors (i.e., the managers in different de-partments) and their direct full-time employees. We then distrib-uted the questionnaire during regular work hours in each hotel.Though one of the major challenges for organizational research isthat it is difficult to define appropriate time intervals between thefirst and second phases of data collection, prior studies have indi-cated that the proper timing to measure leadership styles and itsinfluences on creativity is around one to three months (Amabileet al., 2004; Bauer & Green, 1996; Gong et al., 2009). In addition,a small number of new employees were hired in several hotels, andthe collection of creativity data with a two-month lag can thusallow supervisors to have more time to observe their creativeperformance. Therefore, the employees received sealed envelopesthat contained questionnaires about their supervisors’ trans-formational leadership and their perceptions of their own creativerole identity and creative self-efficacy at Time1 (T1). About twomonths later (T2), on a separate questionnaire, the supervisorsassessed their employees’ creativity. We distributed the surveyquestionnaires to 560 employees and their 84 supervisors andreceived 395 pairs of complete and valid questionnaires out of the480 possible pairs, giving an 82% overall response rate. On average,each individual supervisor rated five employees (ranging fromthree to eight). The average age of the responding employees was37, and their average tenure in the companies was seven years.There were 171 female (43%) and 224 male (57%) respondents inthe collected sample. The employees’ education level was distrib-uted as follows: 108 (27%) had master’s degrees, 263 (67%) hadbachelor’s degrees and 24 (6%) had a high school education. Inaddition, there were 209 front line employees (53%) and 186 backoffice ones (47%) in our sample.
3.2. Measures
All the employee-reported variables were measured using aseven-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1,“strongly disagree,” to7, “strongly agree,” and the supervisors-rated variable wasmeasured by a five-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1,“stronglydisagree,” to 5,“strongly agree.” The precise measures are describedbelow, along with the results of the Cronbach’s alpha coefficientsfor variable measurement.
3.2.1. Transformational leadershipTo assess transformational leadership, we used the Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) Form, also known as 5X-Short(Bass, Avolio, Jung, & Berson, 2003). This twenty-item measure hasmulti-item subscales corresponding to four dimensions: (1)idealized influence (attributed) (e.g., “My leader acts in ways thatbuild my respect”), and idealized influence (behavior) (e.g., “Myleader talks to us about his/her most important values and be-liefs”); (2) inspirational motivation (e.g., “My leader expresses his/her confidence that we will achieve our goals”); (3) intellectualstimulation (e.g., “My leader seeks differing perspectives whensolving problems”); and (4) individual consideration (e.g., “Myleader spends time teaching and coaching me”). The Cronbach’salpha for these items was .96 revealing sufficient reliability(alphas > .70).
3.2.2. Creative role identityWe adopted Farmer et al.’s (2003) four-item Creative Role
Identity Scale to measure employees’ self-perceived creativity as acentral component of their creative self-identity. Sample items are“To be a creative employee is an important part of my identity,” and“I often think about being creative.” The Cronbach’s alpha forcreative self-identity was .73 indicating adequate reliability(alpha > .70).
3.2.3. Creative self-efficacyTo evaluate the employees’ self-perceived confidence and
competence with regard to creative work, we used the four-itemCreative Self-Efficacy Instrument (Tierney & Farmer, 2002). Sam-ple items include “My past experiences and accomplishments in-crease my confidence that I will be able to perform successfully inthis organization,” and “I believe I could have handled a morechallenging job than the one I will be doing.” The Cronbach’s alphafor creative self-efficacy was .82 indicating good reliability(alpha > .70).
3.2.4. CreativityWe adopted three items used in Oldham and Cumming’s (1996)
for the supervisors to assess their employees’ creativity. Sampleitems are “This employee often comes up with original and prac-tical ideas to improve performance,” and “This employee alwayssuggests adaptive and practical ways to achieve goals or objectives”The Cronbach’s alpha for creativity was .82, indicating satisfactoryreliability (alpha > .70) for this instrument.
3.2.5. Control variablesBecause prior research has suggested that employee age, edu-
cation level, gender, and company tenure may have potential in-fluences on employee creative behavior (Farmer et al., 2003; Gonget al., 2009; Shin & Zhou, 2003; Tierney & Farmer, 2011), weincluded these four variables as control ones.
3.3. Analytical strategy
Structural equation modeling (SEM) with AMOS 17.0 was usedto test the hypothesized model. According to Jöreskog and Sörbom(1982), SEM provides a maximum-likelihood estimation of theentire system in a hypothesized model, and enables the assessmentof variables with the data. In our analysis, we adopted Andersonand Gerbing’s (1988) two-step strategy to test the hypothesizedmodel. First, the measurement model was confirmed usingconfirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and then we performed SEManalysis tomeasure the fit and path coefficients of the hypothesizedmodel. The chi-square (c2) value, degrees of freedom (df), value ofc2/df, comparative fix index (CFI), Bollen’s incremental fit index(IFI), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), standardized root mean square re-sidual (SRMR), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA),noncentrality parameter (NCP), and minimum value of thediscrepancy (FMIN) were adopted to estimate model fit. The rec-ommended reference values of these indices are shown in Table 1.In addition, there was a possibility of non-independent observa-tions arising when the supervisors’ evaluated their employees’creativity in our survey, and thus that the results reflected the
C.-J. Wang et al. / Tourism Management 40 (2014) 79e8984
leader rather than the employees that they assessed. A one-wayanalysis of variance (ANOVA) was thus implemented, withemployee creativity as the dependent variable, and the resultsrevealed that no systematic differences in the supervisors’ rating ofthis variable (F ¼ .71, p ¼ .62). Based on this, the proposed modelwas then assessed using SEM analyses.
4. Results
Table 2 shows the means, standard deviations, reliabilities, andcorrelations of the variables. Transformational leadership waspositively related to employee creative role identity (r ¼ .43,p < .01), creative self-efficacy (r ¼ .44, p < .05), and creativity(r ¼ .19, p < .05). Both employee creative role identity and creativeself-efficacy were positively related to creativity (r ¼ .27, p < .01;r ¼ .30, p < .01, respectively), and employee creative role identitywas positively related to creative self-efficacy (r ¼ .73, p < .01).
4.1. Preliminary analyses
To measure the internal consistency reliability, convergent val-idity and discriminant validity of the constructs in our proposedmodel, we performed CFA analysis on the four constructs oftransformational leadership, employee creative role identity, crea-tive self-efficacy, and creativity (see Table 3). The results revealedthat the composite reliability (CR) of each construct ranged from.82 to .96, exceeding the .60 CR threshold value, and giving evi-dence of internal consistency reliability (Bagozzi & Yi, 1989; Fornell& Larcker, 1981). In addition, the factor loadings of the individualitems in the 4-factor model were all significant (all p < .001),indicating preliminary evidence for the convergent validity of themeasurement model. Meanwhile, the average variance extracted(AVE) of all constructs ranged from .53 to .62, exceeding the .50 AVEthreshold value (Bagozzi & Yi, 1989; Fornell & Larcker, 1981), andthus the convergent validity was acceptable. Moreover, Table 2shows that the estimated intercorrelations among all constructswere less than the square roots of the AVE in each construct, andthis provides preliminary support for discriminant validity (Hair,Black, Babin, Anderson, & Tatham, 2006). Table 4 also reveals thatthe 4-factor model provides more satisfactory fit indices comparedto the 3-factor model, the 2-factor model, and the 1-factor model.Most important of all, the differences in c2 between the 4-factormodel and other alternative models were significant (all p < .05),and these provide evidence of the discriminant validity, and reducethe potential influences of CMV (Podsakoff et al., 2003; Podsakoff &Organ, 1986). Therefore, we can conclude that the 4-factor model(i.e., the proposed model) is the best to examine the differentcharacteristics of the four constructs considered in this work.Moreover, to improve the construct validity of themodel, and lowerconcerns with regard to obtaining the leadership style perceived byemployees, instead of the actual leadership style of supervisors, we
Table 2Means, standard deviations, reliabilities, and correlations of variables.
Mean S.D. 1
1. Age 36.53 12.52 e
2. Tenure 6.63 4.20 .54**3. Education 2.23 0.56 �.084. Transformational leadership 5.45 0.87 .045. Creative role identity 5.46 0.71 .106. Creative self-efficacy 5.10 0.81 .10*7. Creativity 3.74 0.63 �.02
Note:(1) *p < .05; **p < .01 (two-tailed); N ¼ 395.(2) The square root of AVE for discriminant validity are in parentheses along the diagon
calculated the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC1), reliability ofgroup mean (ICC2) and inter-rater agreement (rwg) for trans-formational leadership (Bliese, 2000; James, Demaree, & Wolf,1984). The results revealed that the value of ICC1 was .38, and aone-way ANOVA test showed significant differences between groupvariance for transformational leadership (F ¼ 3.17, p < .01). Inaddition, the ICC2 value of transformational leadership was .72,exceeding the .70 threshold value (Bliese, 2000). Moreover, thevalues of the mean and median of rwg were .95 and .96 (rangingfrom .78 to .99 among all groups), demonstrating high inter-rateragreement with regard to transformational leadership. Therefore,employees in groups tend to agree on their supervisors’ trans-formational leadership style, and we thus calculated their meanscores to represent the actual transformational leadership and usedthese in the SEM analysis.
4.2. Structural model
The structural modeling results indicate that the hypothesizedmodel fit the data well (c2 ¼ 1278.26, df ¼ 545, c2/df ¼ 2.35,CFI ¼ .91, IFI ¼ .91, TLI ¼ .90, and SRMR ¼ .05, see Table 4). Wefollowed Baron and Kenny’s (1986) suggestion and used a causalsteps strategy to examine the first condition of mediation withregard to Hypotheses 1 and 2. As shown in Table 2, the correlationcoefficients indicated that transformational leadership was posi-tively and significantly related to employee creativity (r ¼ .19,p < .01), and was also positively and significantly related to em-ployees’ creative self-efficacy (r ¼ .44, p < .01). In addition, theresults of the direct effect of transformational leadership on crea-tivity (standardized direct effect ¼ .22, p < .01, see Fig. 2), and thedirect effect of transformational leadership on creative self-efficacy(standardized direct effect ¼ .50, p < .01) were both statisticallysignificant. Hypotheses 1 and 2 were thus supported.
For testing Hypotheses 3 and 4, we measured the second con-ditions of mediation. As the results show in Table 2, the correlationcoefficients indicated that transformational leadership was posi-tively and significantly related to employee creative role identity(r¼ .43, p< .01), employee creative role identity was positively andsignificantly related to employee creative self-efficacy (r ¼ .73,p < .01), and employees’ creative self-efficacy was positively andsignificantly related to employees’ creativity (r ¼ .30, p < .01). Inaddition, the results of the direct effects of transformational lead-ership on creative role identity (standardized direct effect ¼ .48,p < .01, see Fig. 3), the direct effect of creative role identity oncreative self-efficacy (standardized direct effect ¼ .90, p < .01), andthe direct effect of creative self-efficacy on creativity (standardizeddirect effect ¼ .37, p < .01) were all statistically significant. There-fore, the second conditions of mediation in our proposed modelwere supported. In order to investigate the indirect effects of thedependent variable through the mediators, we performedpercentile bootstrapping and bias-corrected percentile
2 3 4 5 6 7
e
�.18** e
.00 �.02 (.79)
.03 .09 .43** (.74)
.02 .07 .44** .73** (.74)�.03 .09 .19** .27** .30** (.78)
al.
Table 3Coefficients for the 4-factor measurement model.
Construct No. of items Cronbach’s a Variable Standardizedfactor loadings
S.E. C.R.(t-value) AVE Compositereliability
Transformational leadership 20 0.85 TL1 0.77 e e 0.62 0.96TL2 0.80 0.05 17.42 (***)TL3 0.79 0.06 17.18 (***)TL4 0.81 0.06 17.82 (***)TL5 0.78 0.06 17.07 (***)TL6 0.86 0.05 19.16 (***)TL7 0.75 0.06 16.23 (***)TL8 0.82 0.05 18.14 (***)TL9 0.81 0.05 17.75 (***)TL10 0.74 0.05 15.89 (***)TL11 0.78 0.05 16.86 (***)TL12 0.75 0.05 16.07 (***)TL13 0.82 0.05 18.09 (***)TL14 0.72 0.05 15.47 (***)TL15 0.80 0.05 17.43 (***)TL16 0.76 0.05 16.31 (***)TL17 0.82 0.05 17.97 (***)TL18 0.72 0.05 15.40 (***)TL19 0.78 0.05 16.82 (***)TL20 0.72 0.05 15.08 (***)
Creative role identity 4 0.73 CRI1 0.67 e e 0.53 0.82CRI2 0.70 0.08 11.76 (***)CRI3 0.69 0.09 11.71 (***)CRI4 0.83 0.07 18.11 (***)
Creative self-efficacy 4 0.82 CSE1 0.74 e e 0.55 0.82CSE2 0.72 0.07 13.57 (***)CSE3 0.79 0.07 14.95 (***)CSE4 0.67 0.06 12.65 (***)
Creativity 3 0.82 CR1 0.79 e e 0.61 0.82CR2 0.74 0.07 13.63 (***)CR3 0.81 0.07 14.16 (***)
Note:(1) **p < .01; ***p < .001 (two-tailed); N ¼ 395.(2) c2 ¼ 1128.22, df ¼ 428, c2/df ¼ 3.63, CFI ¼ .92, IFI ¼ .92, TLI ¼ .91, and SRMR ¼ .05.
C.-J. Wang et al. / Tourism Management 40 (2014) 79e89 85
bootstrapping at a 99% confidence interval with 10,000 bootstrapsamples (Taylor, MacKinnon, & Tein, 2008). We followed the sug-gestions of Preacher and Hayes (2008), and calculated the confi-dence interval of the lower and upper bounds to test of whether theindirect effects were significant. As shown in Table 5, the results ofthe bootstrap test confirmed the existence of a positive and sig-nificant mediating effect for creative role identity between trans-formational leadership and employee creative self-efficacy(standardized indirect effect ¼ .43, p < .01), and positive and sig-nificant mediating effects for employee creative role identity andcreative self-efficacy between transformational leadership and
Table 4Confirmatory factor analysis results.
Model
Measurement models: all scales4-Factor model3-Factor model (Transformational leadership þ Creative role identity)3-Factor model (Transformational leadership þ Creative self-efficacy)3-Factor model (Transformational leadership þ Creativity)3-Factor model (Creative role identity þ Creative self-efficacy)3-Factor model (Creative role identity þ Creativity)3-Factor model (Creative self-efficacy þ Creativity)2-Factor model (Transformational leadership þ Creative role
identity þ Creative self-efficacy)2-Factor model (Transformational leadership þ Creative role identity þ Creativity)2-Factor model (Transformational leadership þ Creative self-efficacy þ Creativity)2-Factor model (Creative role identity þ Creative self-efficacy þ Creativity)1-Factor modelStructural models
Note: *p < .05; **p < .01 (two-tailed); N ¼ 395.
employee creativity (standardized indirect effect ¼ .16, p < .01).Hypotheses 3 and 4 were thus supported.
To explore the moderating effects of job complexity, multi-group structural models were conducted to examine Hypotheses5e7. First, we set the path coefficients from transformationalleadership to creative role identity to be equal, and estimated otherpath coefficients freely of both front line and back office groups.Therefore, the chi-square difference between this constrainedmodel and the unconstrained ones can be used to examineHypothesis 5. As can be seen in Table 6, the chi-square differencewas significant (Dc2ð1Þ ¼ 8:04, p < .01) and the coefficient
c2 df c2/df Dc2ðDdfÞ CFI IFI TLI SRMR
1128.22 428 3.63 e .92 .92 .91 .051556.71 431 2.64 428.49(3)** .86 .86 .85 .081744.21 431 3.44 615.99(3)** .84 .84 .83 .091563.57 431 3.45 435.35(3)** .86 .86 .85 .071136.90 431 4.52 8.68(3)* .91 .91 .91 .051481.08 431 4.59 352.86(3)** .87 .87 .86 .061485.76 431 5.01 357.54(3)** .87 .87 .86 .061958.67 433 3.46 830.45(5)** .81 .82 .80 .09
1988.08 433 5.45 859.86(5)** .81 .81 .80 .092169.98 433 2.30 1041.76(5)** .79 .79 .77 .101496.50 433 3.63 368.28(5)** .87 .87 .86 .062364.52 434 2.64 1236.30(6)** .77 .77 .75 .101278.26 545 2.35 e .91 .91 .90 .05
Note: * p < .05; ** p < .01 (two-tailed); N = 395
.53**
.22**
.50**Transformational leadership
Creativity
Creative role identity
Creative self-efficacy
Fig. 2. Direct effects of transformational leadership on creativity, creative self-efficacyand creative role identity.
C.-J. Wang et al. / Tourism Management 40 (2014) 79e8986
estimated from transformational leadership to creative role iden-tity is .85 (p < .01) in the front line group and .14 (p < .05) in theback office one. As expected, the positive relationship betweentransformational leadership and employee creative role identitywas stronger when employees in front line jobs than those in backoffice jobs, supporting Hypothesis 5. We then set the path co-efficients from creative role identity to creative self-efficacy asequal, leaving the other relationships to be freely estimated in bothgroups. The results shown in Table 6 reveal that the chi-squaredifference was significant (Dc2ð1Þ ¼ 4:92, p < .05) between theconstrained and unconstrained models, and the positive relation-ship between creative role identity and creative self-efficacy wasstronger in front line group than in back office one, and soHypothesis 6 was supported. Finally, we set the path coefficientsfrom creative self-efficacy to creativity to be equal, and the otherrelationships in themodel were estimated freely between front line
Note: (1) * p < .05; ** p < .01 (two-tailed); N = 395
(2) 2 = 1278.26, df = 545, 2 /df = 2.35, CFI = .91,
.48**
.09
.90**Transformational
leadership Creative role
identity
Csel
.11
Fig. 3. Structural equation modelin
and back office groups. The results in Table 6 revealed the chi-square difference was significant (Dc2ð1Þ ¼ 7:48, p < .01) betweenthe constrained and unconstrained models, and the positive rela-tionship between creative self-efficacy and employee creativity wasstronger in front line group than in back office one. Therefore, theresults supported Hypothesis 7.
5. Discussion
This study makes four contributions to the hospitality literature.First of all, we developed and examined a model that integrates thetheories of transformational leadership and creativity. Although anumber of past studies have reviewed the relationship betweentransformational leadership and creativity (Gong et al., 2009;Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Shin & Zhou, 2003), this is the first toinvestigate the direct and indirect effects of supervisors’ trans-formational leadership on individual creativity in a hospitalitycontext. Since organizations in the field of hospitality require cre-ative employees to deliver high quality services and maintainprofitability (Lin & Wu, 2008; Robinson & Beesley, 2010; Wong &Pang, 2003), the main contribution of this work is thus thismodel, which has a strong theoretical foundation and can be usedto assess the influences of transformational leadership on a numberof fundamental creative outcomes based on hotel industry data inTaiwan. Meanwhile, the results of this empirical study support theconclusion of prior creativity scholars that transformational lead-ership has significant effects with regard to fostering the creativityof individual employees.
Second, our results show that increases in employee creativerole identity and creative self-efficacy are both related to increasesin their performance of creativity. As predicted, our findings revealthat strengthening employees’ sense of role identity for creativework can enhance their self-efficacy with regard to creative tasks.Our findings also show that if employees can be made to feel thatthey are capable of successfully engaging in creative work, thenboth their self-efficacy and actual attainment with regard to crea-tivity can be enhanced due to this causal chain mechanism, espe-cially in the field of hospitality research (Bandura & Locke, 2003;Karatepe et al., 2006; Ogaard et al., 2008).
Third, our conclusions extend Tierney and Farmer’s (2011) workby examining employee creative role identity as a mediator of theimpact of transformational leadership on employees’ creative self-efficacy, and also expand the work of Shin and Zhou (2003) by
IFI = .91, TLI = .90, and SRMR = .05
.12*
-.02
.11
-.04
.37**
Creativity reative
f-efficacy
Age
Education
Gender
Tenure
g of the hypothesized model.
Table 5Standardized direct, indirect, and total effects of the hypothesized model.
Point estimate Product ofcoefficients
Bootstrapping
Percentile 99% CI Bias-correctedpercentile 99% CI
Two-tailed significance
SE Z Lower Upper Lower Upper
Standardized direct effectsTransformational leadership / Creativity 0.09 0.06 1.52 �0.18 0.22 �0.15 0.22 0.62Transformational leadership / Creative self-efficacy 0.11 0.05 1.82 �0.15 0.21 �0.15 0.21 0.37Transformational leadership / Creative role identity 0.48 0.06 8.10 0.30 0.62 0.30 0.62 0.00 (**)Creative role identity / Creative self-efficacy 0.90 0.05 17.78 0.75 1.02 0.75 1.02 0.00 (**)Creative self-efficacy / Creativity 0.37 0.07 5.23 0.18 0.57 0.18 0.57 0.00 (**)Standardized indirect effectsTransformational leadership / Creativity 0.16 0.05 3.28 0.06 0.30 0.06 0.30 0.00 (**)Transformational leadership / Creative self-efficacy 0.43 0.07 6.12 0.26 0.62 0.26 0.62 0.00 (**)Standardized total effectsTransformational leadership / Creativity 0.25 0.05 4.23 0.07 0.38 0.07 0.37 0.00 (**)Transformational leadership / Creative self-efficacy 0.54 0.05 10.68 0.38 0.66 0.37 0.66 0.00 (**)Transformational leadership / Creative role identity 0.48 0.06 8.10 0.30 0.62 0.30 0.62 0.00 (**)Creative role identity / Creative self-efficacy 0.90 0.05 17.78 0.75 1.02 0.75 1.02 0.00 (**)Creative self-efficacy / Creativity 0.37 0.07 5.23 0.18 0.57 0.18 0.57 0.00 (**)
Note: Standardized estimating of 10,000 bootstrap sample, *p < .05, **p < .01.
C.-J. Wang et al. / Tourism Management 40 (2014) 79e89 87
investigating employee creative self-efficacy and creative self-efficacy as mediators between supervisors with transformationalleadership and employee creativity. More specifically, this is thefirst work that examines the mediating roles of both employee roleidentity and self-efficacy in the relationship between leadershipstyle and employee behavior in the hotel industry. Our results areconsistent with social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), whichsuggests that individuals’ beliefs in their capabilities to producecreative outcomes, and the strength of their self identification ascreative people at work, both have critical influences in the causalchain mechanism between transformational leadership and em-ployees’ creative performance. Most important of all, the results ofour study contribute to the literature by treating employee creativerole identity and creative self-efficacy as variables that connecttransformational leadership, social cognitive theory and creativitytheories in the hospitality context.
Finally, as the hotel industry has many very different jobs (e.g.,front line and back office ones) which are characterized by differentlevels of job complexity, our empirical results revealed a strongerrelationships between transformational leadership and employeecreative role identity for front line employees than for back officeones, as well as between employee creative role identity and cre-ative self-efficacy, and between employee creative self-efficacy andcreativity. These conclusions also support previous arguments thatemployees in more complex jobs, like front line work, are likely tohave a higher level of recognition of their creative role identity,have more confidence in their creative self-efficacy, and a betterfocus on creativity, while those inmore routine jobs, like back officework, may have lower levels of recognition of their creative role
Table 6Invariance test of the two-group structural model and testing of moderating effects.
Back office group(N ¼ 186)
Front line
Standardizedcoefficients
Z-value Standardicoefficien
Transformational leadership / Creativerole identity
0.14 2.52* 0.85
Creative role identity / Creativeself-efficacy
0.82 15.87** 0.94
Creative self-efficacy / Creativity 0.13 2.23* 0.65
Note: *p < .05; **p < .01 (two-tailed); N ¼ 395.
identity, less confidence in their creative self-efficacy, and moreinhibitions about their creativity (Amabile, 1988; Oldham &Cummings, 1996; Shalley et al., 2004).
5.1. Practical implications
All innovations begin with creative ideas, and the successfulimplementation of creativity depends on developing these beyondtheir original state (Amabile et al., 1996, 2005). Since creativity isone way for organizations to obtain and maintain competitive ad-vantages (Amabile et al., 1996), and work environment factors, suchas styles of leadership, are regarded as antecedents of employees’creative behavior (Amabile et al., 2004; Shalley & Gilson, 2004), it isimportant for practitioners to learn more about any causal chainrelationships that may exist between leadership and employeecreative performance. We thus suggest that hotel companies shouldmake more efforts to train their supervisors and encourage them toimprove their reciprocal relationships with their employees. With agreater awareness of this, supervisors should be better able todetect the direct and indirect influences of transformational lead-ership in the psychological processes that relate to creativity. Inaddition, by training supervisors to utilize transformational lead-ership, companies in the hospitality industry could help their em-ployees to obtain the creative skills required by increasing theirexperiences of engaging in creative activities, as well as their con-fidence to successfully achieve creative tasks. Since the hotel in-dustry is labor intensive, greater employee confidence andperformance of creativity can not only improve customer satisfac-tion, but also promote customer loyalty with repeat patronage.
group (N¼ 209) Unconstrainedmodel chi-square(df ¼ 1090)
Constrainedmodel chi-square(df ¼ 1091)
Dc2ðDdf ¼ 1Þ
zedts
Z-value
16.23** 1951.24 1959.28 8.04**
18.61** 1951.24 1956.16 4.92*
12.76** 1951.24 1958.72 7.48**
C.-J. Wang et al. / Tourism Management 40 (2014) 79e8988
In addition, as the business world of hotel industry is facing withmore competitions, employees who have abilities and experiencegained from various jobs are valuable assets that companies need tonurture and retain. For example, employees with the experience offront linework can better understand the expectations of customers,while those with the experience of back office work can better un-derstand the administrationprocesses that support the operations ofhotels.Most importantof all, bothkindsof experience arevital for thesmooth running and profitability of hotels, aswell as the gaining andmaintainingof competition advantages. Therefore, supervisors orHRmanagers shouldprovide employeeswithmore opportunities for jobrotation so that they can obtain a richer variety of work experiences.Employees with many different experiences and capabilities areexpected to have greater motivation and self-efficacy to satisfy cus-tomers, as well as improve the service processes of hotels (Mohsin &Lockyer, 2010; Robinson & Beesley, 2010; Wong & Pang, 2003).
5.2. Limitations and directions for future research
This study has a number of limitations as follows. First, most ofour data were collected from employees’ self-reports, raising thepossibility of CMV (Podsakoff et al., 2003). However, because thevariables examined in this work, i.e., creative role identity andcreative self-efficacy, reveal individuals’ psychological states, it isproposed that there is a sound theoretical basis for collecting thisdata from the employees themselves (Bandura & Cervone, 1983). Inaddition, we also collected data about employee creativity from therelated supervisors, and this is one factor that may reduce or pre-vent CMV biases. Most important of all, the results of the 4-factormeasurement model reveal better fit indices compared the 3-factor model, the 2-factor model, and 1-factor model, while thedifferences in c2 between the all models were significant (allp < .05), providing evidence that this may have lowered the po-tential effects of CMV (Podsakoff et al., 2003; Podsakoff & Organ,1986). Second, our proposed model was derived from theoriesproposed in a Western context, and we collected data and exam-ined the model based on hotel industry data obtained in Taiwan.Although prior studies have shown support for the relationshipsbetween transformational leadership and employee creativityacross cultures (Gong et al., 2009; Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Shin& Zhou, 2003), there have been no previous studies utilizingemployee creative role identity and creative self-efficacy as medi-ators to integrate these two theories in a Chinese society. Therefore,our research results should be applied to other cultural contextswith some caution, and future works to replicate these findings inother cultures could help to prove their validity (Zhou & Su, 2010).Third, we did not consider the effects of transactional leadership(Bass et al., 2003), such as when supervisors provide rewards andrecognition based on whether employees successfully carry outtheir roles and assignments. Previous studies have claimed thattransformational leadership has a greater influence than trans-actional leadership, and thus controlled for the effects of the latterwhen investigating transformational leadership (Bass &Steidlmeier, 1999; Jung & Avolio, 1999; Sosik et al., 1997). Futureresearch could consider transformational leadership together withtransactional leadership and investigate their combined effects onemployee creativity. Finally, our study could be repeated underdifferent industry contexts to examine the interacting causal re-lationships between transformational leadership and employeecreativity in other businesses. Although we used structural equa-tion modeling to carry out a simultaneous examination of ourentire proposed model in the hospitality sector, the results stillneed to be taken cautiously. We suggest that future research couldaddress this issue by obtaining data from experimental and longi-tudinal research in different industries to strengthen causal
interpretation of the interacting relationship between trans-formational leadership and employee creativity.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2013.05.008.
References
Amabile, T. M. (1983). The social-psychology of creativity e a componentialconceptualization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(2), 357e376.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.45.2.357.
Amabile, T. M. (1988). A model of creativity and innovation in organizations.Research in Organizational Behavior, 10, 123e167.
Amabile, T. M., Barsade, S. G., Mueller, J. S., & Staw, B. M. (2005). Affect and creativityat work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 50(3), 367e403.
Amabile, T. M., Conti, R., Coon, H., Lazenby, J., & Herron,M. (1996). Assessing theworkenvironment for creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 39(5), 1154e1184.
Amabile, T. M., Schatzel, E. A., Moneta, G. B., & Kramer, S. J. (2004). Leader behaviorsand the work environment for creativity: perceived leader support. LeadershipQuarterly, 15(1), 5e32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2003.12.003.
Anderson, J. C., & Gerbing, D.W. (1988). Structural equationmodeling in practicee areview and recommended two step approach. Psychological Bulletin, 103(3),411e423.
Bagozzi, R. P., & Yi, Y. J. (1989). On the use of structural equation models inexperimental-designs. Journal of Marketing Research, 26(3), 271e284. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3172900.
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory.Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall.
Bandura, A., & Cervone, D. (1983). Self-evaluative and self-efficacy mechanisms gov-erning the motivational effects of goal systems. Journal of Personality and SocialPsychology, 45(5), 1017e1028. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.45.5.1017.
Bandura, A., & Locke, E. A. (2003). Negative self-efficacy and goal effects revisited.Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(1), 87e99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.1.87.
Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator mediator variable distinction insocial psychological-research e conceptual, strategic, and statistical consider-ations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(6), 1173e1182.
Bass, B. M. (1990). From transactional to transformational leadership e learning toshare the vision. Organizational Dynamics, 18(3), 19e31.
Bass, B. M., Avolio, B. J., & Goodheim, L. (1987). Biography and the assessment oftransformational leadership at the world-class level. Journal of Management,13(1), 7e19.
Bass, B. M., Avolio, B. J., Jung, D. I., & Berson, Y. (2003). Predicting unit performanceby assessing transformational and transactional leadership. Journal of AppliedPsychology, 88(2), 207e218. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.2.207.
Bass, B. M., & Steidlmeier, P. (1999). Ethics, character, and authentic trans-formational leadership behavior. Leadership Quarterly, 10(2), 181e217.
Bauer, T. N., & Green, S. G. (1996). Development of a leader-member exchange: alongitudinal test. Academy of Management Journal, 39(6), 1538e1567.
Binnewies, C., Sonnentag, S., & Mojza, E. J. (2009). Feeling recovered and thinkingabout the good sides of one’s work. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology,14(3), 243e256. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0014933.
Bliese, P. D. (2000). Within-group agreement, non-independence, and reliability:implications for data aggregation and analysis. In K. J. Klein, & S. W. J. Kozlowski(Eds.), Multilevel theory, research, and methods in organizations (pp. 349e381).San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Brislin, R. W. (1970). Back-translation for cross-cultural research. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 1(3), 185e216.
Burke, P. J., & Reitzes, D. C. (1981). The link between identity and role performance.Social Psychology Quarterly, 44(2), 83e92. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3033704.
Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.Carmeli, A., & Schaubroeck, J. (2007). The influence of leaders’ and other referents’
normative expectations on individual involvement in creative work. LeadershipQuarterly, 18(1), 35e48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaque.2006.11.001.
Chang, S.,Gong, Y. P., & Shum,C. (2011). Promoting innovation inhospitalitycompaniesthrough human resource management practices. International Journal of Hospi-tality Management, 30(4), 812e818. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2011.01.001.
Claver-Cortes, E., Molina-Azorin, J. F., & Pereira-Moliner, J. (2006). Strategic groupsin the hospitality industry: Intergroup and intragroup performance differencesin Alicante, Spain. Tourism Management, 27(6), 1101e1116. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2005.11.006.
Dvir, T., Eden, D., Avolio, B. J., & Shamir, B. (2002). Impact of transformationalleadership on follower development and performance: a field experiment.Academy of Management Journal, 45(4), 735e744.
Farmer, S. M., Tierney, P., & Kung-McIntyre, K. (2003). Employee creativity inTaiwan: an application of role identity theory. Academy of Management Journal,46(5), 618e630.
Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with un-observable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research,18(1), 39e50. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3151312.
C.-J. Wang et al. / Tourism Management 40 (2014) 79e89 89
George, J. M. (2007). Creativity in organizations. Academy of Management Annals, 1,439e477. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/078559814.
Gist, M. E., & Mitchell, T. R. (1992). Self-efficacy e a theoretical-analysis of its de-terminants and malleability. Academy of Management Review, 17(2), 183e211.http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/258770.
Gong, Y., Huang, J. C., & Farh, J. L. (2009). Employee learning orientation, trans-formational leadership, and employee creativity: themediating role of employeecreative self-efficacy. Academy of Management Journal, 52(4), 765e778.
Gumusluoglu, L., & Ilsev, A. (2009). Transformational leadership, creativity, andorganizational innovation. Journal of Business Research, 62(4), 461e473. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2007.07.032.
Gushue, G. V., Clarke, C. P., Pantzer, K. M., & Scanlan, K. R. L. (2006). Self-efficacy,perceptions of barriers, vocational identity, and the career exploration behaviorof Latino/a high school students. Career Development Quarterly, 54(4), 307e317.
Hair, J., Black, B., Babin, B., Anderson, R., & Tatham, R. (2006). Multivariate dataanalysis (6th ed.). NJ: Prentice-Hall: Upper Saddle River.
Hirst, G., Van Dick, R., & Van Knippenberg, D. (2009). A social identity perspectiveon leadership and employee creativity. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 30(7),963e982. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/job.600.
Hon, A. (2011). Enhancing employee creativity in the Chinese context: the medi-ating role of employee self-concordance. International Journal of HospitalityManagement, 30(2), 375e384. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2010.06.002.
Horng, J. S., & Lee, Y. C. (2009). What environmental factors influence creativeculinary studies? International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management,21(1), 100e117. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09596110910930214.
Hu, H. H., Kandampully, J., & Juwaheer, T. D. (2009). Relationships and impacts ofservice quality, perceived value, customer satisfaction, and image: an empiricalstudy. Service Industries Journal, 29(2), 111e125. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02642060802292932.
James, L. R., Demaree, R. G., & Wolf, G. (1984). Estimating within-group interraterreliability with and without response bias. Journal of Applied Psychology, 69(1),85e98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.69.1.85.
Jöreskog, K. G., & Sörbom, D. (1982). Recent developments in structural equationmodeling. Journal of Marketing Research, 19(4), 404e416.
Jung, D. I., & Avolio, B. J. (1999). Effects of leadership style and followers’ culturalorientation on performance in group and individual task conditions. Academy ofManagement Journal, 42(2), 208e218.
Karatepe, O. M., Uludag, O., Menevis, I., Hadzimehmedagic, L., & Baddar, L. (2006).The effects of selected individual characteristics on frontline employee per-formance and job satisfaction. Tourism Management, 27(4), 547e560. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2005.02.009.
Liao, H., Liu, D., & Loi, R. (2010). Looking at both sides of the social exchange coin: asocial cognitive perspective on the joint effects of relationship quality anddifferentiation on creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 53(5), 1090e1109.
Lin, C. T., & Wu, C. S. (2008). Selecting a marketing strategy for private hotels inTaiwan using the analytic hierarchy process. Service Industries Journal, 28(8),1077e1091. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02642060802187991.
Maroudas, L., Kyriakidou, O., & Vachari, A. (2008). Employees motivation in theluxury hotel industry: the perceived effectiveness of human resource practices.Managing Leisure: An International Journal, 13(3e4), 258e271.
Mohsin, A., & Lockyer, T. (2010). Customer perceptions of service quality in luxuryhotels in New Delhi, India: an exploratory study. International Journal ofContemporary Hospitality Management, 22(2e3), 160e173. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09596111011018160.
Ogaard, T., Marnburg, E., & Larsen, S. (2008). Perceptions of organizational structurein the hospitality industry: consequences for commitment, job satisfaction andperceived performance. Tourism Management, 29(4), 661e671. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2007.07.006.
Oldham, G. R., & Cummings, A. (1996). Employee creativity: personal and contextualfactors at work. Academy of Management Journal, 39(3), 607e634.
Paulsen, N., Maldonado, D., Callan, V. J., & Ayoko, O. (2009). Charismatic leadership,change and innovation in an R&D organization. Journal of Organizational ChangeManagement, 22(5), 511e523. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09534810910983479.
Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Lee, J. Y., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2003). Commonmethod biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature andrecommended remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(5), 879e903. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9101.88.5.879.
Podsakoff, P. M., & Organ, D. W. (1986). Self-reports in organizational research e
problems and prospects. Journal of Management, 12(4), 531e544. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/014920638601200408.
Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. (2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies forassessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. BehaviorResearch Methods, 40(3), 879e891.
Robinson, R. N. S., & Beesley, L. G. (2010). Linkages between creativity and intentionto quit: an occupational study of chefs. Tourism Management, 31(6), 765e776.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2009.08.003.
Shalley, C. E., & Gilson, L. L. (2004). What leaders need to know: a review of socialand contextual factors that can foster or hinder creativity. Leadership Quarterly,15(1), 33e53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2003.12.004.
Shalley, C. E., Gilson, L. L., & Blum, T. C. (2009). Interactive effects of growth needstrength, work context, and job complexity on self-reported creative perfor-mance. Academy of Management Journal, 52(3), 489e505.
Shalley, C. E., Zhou, J., & Oldham, G. R. (2004). The effects of personal and contextualcharacteristics on creativity: where should we go from here? Journal of Man-agement, 30(6), 933e958. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jm.2004.06.007.
Shin, S. J., & Zhou, J. (2003). Transformational leadership, conservation, and crea-tivity: evidence from Korea. Academy of Management Journal, 46(6), 703e714.
Sosik, J. J., Avolio, B. J., & Kahai, S. S. (1997). Effects of leadership style and anonymityon group potency and effectiveness in a group decision support system envi-ronment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(1), 89e103.
Taylor, A. B., MacKinnon, D. P., & Tein, J. Y. (2008). Tests of the three-path mediatedeffect. Organizational Research Methods, 11(2), 241e269. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1094428107300344.
Tierney, P., & Farmer, S. M. (2002). Creative self-efficacy: its potential antecedentsand relationship to creative performance. Academy of Management Journal,45(6), 1137e1148.
Tierney, P., & Farmer, S. M. (2011). Creative self-efficacy development and creativeperformance over time. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(2), 277e293. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0020952.
Walumbwa, F. O., & Hartnell, C. A. (2011). Understanding transformationalleadership-employee performance links: the role of relational identificationand self-efficacy. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 84(1),153e172. http://dx.doi.org/10.1348/096317910x485818.
Wang, A. C., & Cheng, B. S. (2010). When does benevolent leadership lead to crea-tivity? The moderating role of creative role identity and job autonomy. Journal ofOrganizational Behavior, 31(1), 106e121. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/job.634.
Wong, S., & Ladkin, A. (2008). Exploring the relationship between employee crea-tivity and job-related motivators in the Hong Kong hotel industry. InternationalJournal of Hospitality Management, 27(3), 426e437. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2008.01.001.
Wong, S., & Pang, L. (2003). Motivators to creativity in the hotel industry e per-spectives of managers and supervisors. Tourism Management, 24(5), 551e559.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0261-5177(03)00004-9.
Zhou, J., & Su, Y. J. (2010). A missing piece of the puzzle: the organizational contextin cultural patterns of creativity. Management and Organization Review, 6(3),391e413. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-8784.2010.00192.x.
Chung-Jen Wang is a Ph.D. in the Department of BusinessAdministration & Institute of International Business atNational Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, and he alsoreceived his Master degree in Project Management atNorthwestern University in the United States. His researchinterests focus on tourism and hospitality management.His articles have appeared or have been accepted forpublication in International Journal of Information andManagement Sciences and other refereed conferenceproceedings.
Huei-Ting Tsai is an Assistant Professor in the Departmentof Business Administration & Institute of InternationalBusiness at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. Shereceived her Ph.D. at University of Cambridge in the UnitedKingdom. Her current research interests focus on servicesmanagement. Her articles have appeared or have beenaccepted for publication in Journal of Business Research,California Management Review, and other refereed jour-nals and conference proceedings.
Ming-Tien Tsai is Dean in the College of Commerce atWuyi University in China. He received his Ph.D. atColumbia University in the United States. His currentresearch interests focus on services management. His ar-ticles have appeared or have been accepted for publicationin Journal of Engineering and Technology Management,Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research,Nursing Ethics, and other refereed journals and conferenceproceedings.
