Paradoxical leadership and employee’s service innovative behavior: A moderated mediation of role-breadth self-efficacy and cognitive flexibility

Abstract

Enhancing employee service innovative behavior (SIB) is a complex process shaped by workplace contradictions and paradoxes, where paradoxical leadership (PL) assumes a critical role in navigating these challenges. However, prior research has primarily overlooked the cognitive perspective in unraveling this association, indicating an inadequate understanding of the mechanisms. Filling this gap in hospitality research, this study developed a moderated mediation model utilizing the principle of triadic reciprocal determinism of social cognitive theory. This study examines role-breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) as a mediating mechanism to link PL with employees' SIB and cognitive flexibility is investigated as a boundary condition to examine the strength of relationships. Data were gathered from 433 employees working in high-end hotels and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with PROCESS was applied to analyze the results. Given the nested nature of the data (employees nested within departments and hotels), we additionally conducted multilevel robustness analyses using random-intercept mixed-effects models. Findings confirm that PL significantly improves employee SIB by fostering their RBSE. This mediating effect becomes more pronounced among employees with higher cognitive flexibility. The multilevel robustness analysis produced consistent conclusions. Our work enhances the understanding of the mediating and moderating mechanisms between PL and SIB, elucidating the underlying processes via the lens of employee self-efficacy and cognition.