Does leader-member exchange enhance performance in the hospitality industry? : The mediating roles of task motivation and creativity

Purpose This paper aims to integrate leader–member exchange (LMX), creativity and performance research and to develop a model to investigate the relationships among LMX, task motivation, creativity and performance in the hospitality industry. Design/methodology/approach Structural equation modeling (SEM) with bootstrap estimation was conducted with a sample of 312 leader–employee dyadic data from international tourist hotels in Taiwan. Findings The results revealed that LMX positively affected performance and creativity. Most important of all, task motivation was found to mediate the relationship between LMX and creativity, while both task motivation and creativity were found to mediate the relationship between LMX and performance. Research limitations/implications With efforts to combine research variables into a unified theoretical model, this study is the first in the field of hospitality research which explores the two-path mediating effects of these relationships in an integrated SEM framework. More specifically, this study provides a synthesized perspective with bootstrap analyses to broaden hotel research with regard to LMX and examine its influences on employees’ creativity and performance. Practical implications The results of this study suggest that human resource departments in hotel companies should provide training programs for supervisors and employees to enhance their reciprocal relationships, and establish reward mechanisms to encourage the development of more creative services at work. Originality/value This study added to the literature with its use of a non-Western sample, and extended the prior research in the context of the hospitality industry. Overall, the conclusions provide empirical evidence in an integrated model that task motivation can strengthen the influence of LMX on creativity and can also nourish the influence of creativity on employee performance.