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Introduction
While radical innovation consists of radical breaks from established routines, incremental innovation refers to the implementation of small changes (Martínez-Pérez et al., 2016). In the hospitality industry, innovativeness is tantamount to responding fast and flexibly to environmental changes (Fraj et al., 2015).
Innovation has become crucial in a highly challenging hotel industry (Chen, 2011; Ottenbacher, 2007; Sandvik et al., 2014), marked by ever-mounting demands of customers (Enz et al., 2010). As such, innovation constitutes a critical determinant for hotels’ competitive edge (Chen, 2011; Tajeddini, 2011; Tsai et al., 2015) and predicts the financial and non-financial performance of hospitality firms (Chang et al., 2011; Den Hertog et al., 2011; Nicolau and Santa-María, 2013).
The prominent role that innovation plays within organizations has enticed researchers to investigate its main antecedents, including the role of organizational leaders, in various industries such as hotel business and hospitality (Robinson and Beesley, 2010; Wong and Pang, 2003). Nonetheless, the competitiveness and performance of hotels likely depend on managers’ capability to stimulate innovation within their firms (Moghimi, 2016). Further, when hospitality industry employees perceive that the organizational climate of their firms supports innovation, the effect of their leaders’ behaviors on their creativity and innovation increases (Moghimi, 2016). Despite these facts, no research has investigated senior managers’ leadership with respect to innovation in hotel firms that enjoy a climate for creativity.
Recently, empirical investigations have begun exploring the relationship between theories of leadership and innovation, but have yielded, thus far, only mixed results. Several researchers have found that leadership and organizational innovation are associated (Nijstad et al., 2014; Pieterse et al., 2010; Sarros et al., 2008; Vaccaro et al., 2012). Conversely, other empirical investigations have found a negative or no relationship between leadership and organizational innovations (Jaussi and Dionne, 2003; Osborn and Marion, 2009).
While business research has been focusing on various types of innovation, particularly the technology-based kind, management innovation, which is a non-technological innovation (Volberda et al., 2013), has recently emerged in the management literature and still remains an under-researched topic (Volberda et al., 2013). Among the various leadership approaches, empowering leadership entails emphasizing the sense of meaning in employees’ work, favoring participation in decision-making, eliminating bureaucratic...