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The purpose of this study was to investigate how and when exploitative leadership hinders hospitality employees’ service innovative behavior. Based on the conservation of resource theory, the authors examined the mediating role of relational energy and the moderating impact of sensitivity to interpersonal mistreatment on this relationship.

Two-wave data collection from 54 hotel leaders and 266 subordinates in China resulted in 266 supervisor–subordinate matched data sets. Structural equation modeling analyses were used for data analysis.

Exploitative leadership is negatively related to hospitality employees’ service innovative behavior via diminished employee relational energy. Furthermore, employees with high sensitivity to interpersonal mistreatment experience intensified negative impact of exploitative leadership on relational energy and subsequent service innovation behavior.

Hotel management must recognize and mitigate the effects of exploitative leadership to foster an environment conducive to service innovation. In addition, hotel managers should be attuned to the employees’ relational energy, recognizing its essential role in driving innovative behavior.

This research contributes insights into how exploitative leadership style impedes employee service innovation behavior. It further illuminates the role of relational energy as a critical mediator in this relationship.

This study investigates the role of emotional energy as a mediator of the relationship between transformational leadership (TFL) and work engagement.

A two-wave survey was conducted through Prolific and 392 valid responses were collected from full-time hospitality and tourism employees. RStudio was used for structural equation modeling and bootstrapping analysis.

Results indicate that the positive relationship between TFL and work engagement is mediated by emotional energy.

The research particularly highlights to practitioners the important role of emotional energy and provides methods to improve emotional energy. Hospitality leaders should monitor the emotional energy levels of their employees and strive to avoid energy depletion. The findings also provide practitioners with some support in explaining the importance of leadership training workshops to leaders and their organizations.

The study provides new insight into the process underlying the TFL–work engagement relationship and highlights the importance of emotional energy as a construct of study in the hospitality industry.