Innovative Behaviors, Employee Creativity, and Sustainable Competitive Advantage: A Moderated Mediation

Abstract

It is challenging for enterprises that lack innovation and creativity to survive successfully in the market. Employee top role performance is not always sufficient to gain a competitive advantage, in which innovative behaviors and creativity can be counted as necessary ingredients to build. This study proposed and tested employee innovative behaviors (IB) and creativity as mediator and moderator, respectively, of the impact of high-performance work practices (HPWPs) on sustainable competitive advantage (CA). The resource-based view and job demands resources model provided the theoretical underpinnings for the developed hypotheses that were tested using a sample of 323 customer-contact employees of 4- and 5-star hotels. The results indicated that HPWP indirectly predicted CA via IB. Also, creativity moderated the impact of HPWPs on innovative behaviors positively and on competitive advantage negatively. Employee innovative behaviors can generate substantial returns to service organizations competing with quasi-homogeneous end-products. The relevant theoretical and practical implications are further discussed. The scope of the study calls for caution in the generalizability of the overall findings. The research acknowledges the need to extend the findings by explicitly accounting for national cultural profiles. This study fills the dearth of research in service innovation in the hotel industry by testing the mediating effect of IB on the HPWPs CA nexus and reveals the moderating role that employee creative traits have in these relationships.