The Interaction of Creativity Encouragement and Standardized Work Practices in Hospitality Industry

Abstract

Aligning with the stress perspective, we propose a moderated mediation model to illustrate the effects of leader encouragement of creativity on employee work outcomes, namely, creativity and service quality in the hospitality industry. We argue that leader encouragement of creativity has contradicting effects on employee creativity and service quality through its effects on employee creativity pressure when employees are under standardized work practices. We collected 175 supervisor-employee dyads in the hospitality industry in China at two points and from multi-sources. Applying bootstrapping technique in SPSS 25 to test our proposed moderated mediation model, the findings suggest that leader encouragement of creativity has a negative indirect effect on employee creativity and service quality via creative pressure when employees work under standardized work practices. Theoretical and practical implications specific to leader encouragement of creativity for employee creativity and service quality in hospitality industry are discussed.