Respect: give it to get it! Does leadership complimented with respect can foster creativity?

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to advance the prevalent leadership–creativity perspective by examining respectful engagement as a missing link between transformational leadership and employees creativity in the tourism and hospitality industry of Pakistan. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected from 288 supervisor–subordinate dyads of hotel and tourism industry in Pakistan. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was used to validate the measurement model and to test the proposed hypotheses using SmartPLS 3.0. Findings - The results suggest that transformational leadership and respectful engagement are significantly related and that respectful engagement fosters employee creativity. The study further confirmed that respectful engagement mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and employee creativity. Practical implications - Besides theoretical contribution, the study has several managerial implications for the tourism and hospitality industry. Globally, in the tourism and hospitality industry, the service selling proposition is largely based on creativity. Hence, the study suggests the managers of tourism and hospitality industry should adopt a transformational leadership style to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage of creativity. The study further recommends the managers capitalize on their transformational leadership style to observe respectful engagement in the workplace, which in turn can encourage employees to behave creatively. Originality/value - Theoretically, this paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge in a couple of ways. Firstly, while several empirical studies have discussed the impact of transformational leadership on employee creativity, and various mediating models have also been tested in this regard, little effort has been made to study the links between transformational leadership and employee creativity despite existing awareness about the importance of respectful engagement for employee creativity. Thus, the current study examines employee creativity with the lens of transformational leadership and respectful engagement. Secondly, the study integrates the theories of transformational leadership, employee engagement and employee creativity.