Transformational Leadership, Mindfulness, and Employee Creativity: A Moderating Effect of Improvisation- Evidence from the Hospitality Industry in the Kingdom of Bahrain

Ever-changing consumer preferences have urged hotel properties to continuously innovate to ensure business sustainability. Particularly in the sales context, the manifestation of this threat is due to the lack of a single optimum approach to selling. Thus, being creative and generating new ideas is imperative for good salespeople to attract customers. To address this lack of an existing componential model of creativity and to uncover the hidden cognitive mechanism underlined with this theory, this study investigated the direct relationship as well as the mediating effect of employee mindfulness on the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity of salespeople. In addition, this study examined the moderating effect of improvization on the relationship between mindfulness and employee creativity. Data collected from 275 salespeople working in the hospitality industry in the Kingdom of Bahrain revealed a significant positive association between transformational leadership and employee creativity. Furthermore, the findings show that employee mindfulness plays a salient role as a mediator in this indirect relationship. However, the moderating effect of improvization on the relationship between employee mindfulness and creativity was found to be insignificant.