The conceptual link between leadership and innovation: the role of organizational climate and personal initiative

Travel and Tourism industry is recognized as one of the vehicles for socio-economic developments. The growing competition arising from globalization trends and technological advances exacerbates the demand for hotels to innovate their services and processes to ensure their effectiveness and competitiveness. It is believed that employees' innovative behavior can be seen as a competitive advantage for their organization and therefore the research into employees' behaviors that associate with innovation is essential. Also, clarifying the factors shaping individual innovation will allow researchers to encourage and motivate such behaviors. Given such importance, the key purpose of this paper is to introduce a conceptual framework that represents the relationship among key organizational variables: namely, leadership, organizational climate, personal initiative and individual innovative behavior. The paper will first review the leadership qualities that are identified as essential for successful innovation practices with its focus on the hotel industry. Then, the four variables are linked by examining organizational climate and personal initiative as moderators on the relationship between leadership and individual innovation behavior. Three propositions are later developed based on the proposed relationships. The framework provides a starting point for further discussion and research on the topic of innovation in the hotel industry which has been neglected with most scholarly studies focusing on manufacturing, and R & D innovation.