Nurturing service innovation through developmental culture: A multilevel model

Hospitality organisations rely on service innovation simultaneously at the team and individual levels to improve service quality. Nevertheless, mechanisms underlying this dual-level service innovation have rarely been investigated. This study aims to develop a multilevel model of the mediating and moderating mechanisms behind the relationship between developmental culture and service innovation at both the team and individual levels. Dyadic data were collected from 58 team leaders and their 442 employees from 31 hospitality organisations in Zhengzhou, China. Multilevel structural equation modelling (MSEM) was utilised to validate the model. Results showed that developmental culture enhanced both team service innovation and service innovative behaviour. Creative self-efficacy and creative role identity partially mediated the relationship between developmental culture and service innovative behaviour. Team-focused transformational leadership (TFL) strengthened the effectiveness of developmental culture on team service innovation under higher but not lower levels of team-focused TFL. Based on the research findings, this study advances the culture-innovation research stream in the hospitality management literature by identifying the direct relationship between developmental culture and service innovation at the team and individual levels and revealing the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this culture-innovation link. This study also provides practitioners with practical insights into how to enhance team and employee service innovative endeavours through building developmental culture and adopting team-focused TFL behaviours in hospitality organisations.