Do transformational leadership and work engagement matter for job performance in luxury hotels?: exploring the role of leaders' managerial skills

PurposeThe paper aimed to explore the underlying work engagement role in transformational leadership and employees' job performance relationships. Moreover, this study also looked at the moderation of leaders' managerial skills in the transformational leadership and work engagement nexus.Design/methodology/approachThe time-lagged data of 360 followers — leader dyads nested in 71 teams were collected from star-rated hotels in Italy and structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was executed.FindingsBased on social learning theory and idiosyncrasy credit theory, the SEM results demonstrate that transformational leadership is significantly and positively linked with job performance and work engagement mediated this relationship. The results also confirmed that leaders' managerial skills strengthen the transformational leadership and work engagement nexus.Practical implicationsHotel managers should consider hiring individuals with transformational leadership skills and provide training to Polish their managerial skills in order to enhance employee engagement at work, which may result in job performance.Originality/valueWith this study, the researchers emphasize the significance of transformational leadership and work engagement for better job performance in the Italian hospitality industry. Our analysis also provides new evidence that leaders' managerial skills strengthen the transformative leadership and work engagement nexus. The study is one of the first to investigate the boundary conditions of leaders' managerial skills in the transformational leadership and work engagement relationship. Based on the findings, the practical and theoretical contributions are also discussed.