How does goal orientation fuel hotel employees’ innovative behaviors? A cross-level investigation

Abstract

The innovative behavior of employees is the basis for the sustainable operation of the hotel industry and examining the factors affecting innovative behavior of employees has important and timely significance. Thus, we draw from goal orientation theory to suggest the potential mechanism of different goal orientations and explore how different goal orientations influence employees’ innovative behaviors via self-efficacy and how the centralized climate moderates this effect. The data were collected at two time points from 323 employees and their supervisors across 68 hotel marketing teams in Beijing and Shanghai. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analysis results confirmed our hypotheses that the centralized climate moderated the relationship between team members’ goal orientations and innovative behaviors. The innovative behaviors can be attained by employees with higher learning goal orientation or performance approach goal orientation. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.