Abstract
PurposeThis research proposes, building on social exchange theory and the componential theory of creativity, a model of servant leadership to investigate its effect on followers' creativity through the intervening mechanism of climate for creativity in the hospitality industry, operating in a non-Western context.Design/methodology/approachThe study predicted that climate for creativity will play a significant intervening role in the servant leadership–creativity relationship. The study’s data were collected from 232 employees working in 70 Palestinian hotels. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses along with techniques used to reduce common method bias.FindingsThe results revealed the significance of climate for creativity as a partial mediator in the relationship between servant leadership and followers' creativity.Practical implicationsThe results might be useful for hotel managers in the context of utilizing servant leadership roles for fostering a creative climate. They might, therefore, consider placing servant leaders as a recruitment agenda priority.Originality/valueThis research is novel in three ways. First, its aim is to enrich the empirical literature on servant leadership, which is still in a maturity stage. Second, even with the research studies that are available, limited analysis is found on how servant leadership can stimulate employees' behaviors in the hospitality industry. Third, the study has been conducted in a non-Western context, in contrast to most servant leadership research studies being carried out in Western countries.
Highlights
Due to its strong ties with organizational creativity, competitive advantage, effectiveness and survival (Lee et al, 2019; Zhou and Shalley, 2003), employees’ creativity is considered to be the most essential economic asset (Agars et al, 2012)
The research model The research study investigates a model of the effects of servant leadership on followers’ creativity in the hospitality industry, where, as shown in Figure 1, climate for creativity serves as a mediating mechanism
The results indicated that servant leadership was positively and significantly associated with creativity (β 5 0.185; p 5 0.001), servant leadership depicted a positive relationship with climate for creativity (β 5 0.679; p 5 0.000) and climate for creativity was positively associated with creativity (β 5 0.748; p 5 0.001)
Summary
Due to its strong ties with organizational creativity, competitive advantage, effectiveness and survival (Lee et al, 2019; Zhou and Shalley, 2003), employees’ creativity is considered to be the most essential economic asset (Agars et al, 2012). Research suggests that creativity is driven by intrinsic motivation because motivation enhances cognitive versatility, endurance and curiosity (Fischer et al, 2019; Shalley et al, 2004). Leaders can encourage employees’ creativity by stimulating their intrinsic motivation, by providing the required resources and by creating working conditions that foster objectives attainment and job autonomy (Minh-Duc and HuuLam, 2019; Shalley and Gilson, 2004; Thao and Kang, 2018; Yang et al, 2017). The full terms of this licence may be seen at http:// creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
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