Inspiring employee voice through leader-member exchange

Abstract

The competitiveness in the hotel setting around the world is increasingly developing worldwide, as hotels try to follow innovative strategies to cultivate, and as customers have more alternatives to make choices. This paper makes use of 3 and 4 star hotels in the South-west region of Cameroon. Five-star hotels were not included in the study because none were found in the region. Leader–member exchange (LMX) induces good employee job performance and innovative outcomes through work engagement. Good behaviour can be seen in their positive innovations and voice contributions. As a result, leadership should be an essential part in the management setting; this work examines the influence of LMX on employees work engagement (EWE), and subsequently the effect of EWE on innovative work behaviour (IWB) and employee voice behaviour (EVB) in the hotels in the South-west region of Cameroon. Poor relationship between leaders and their subordinates hinders employee's progress and threatens the organizations' productivity and long-term success. Data used for the present study included 272 usable responses from hotel employees using three waves of collection with self-administered questionnaire. Correlation, confirmatory factor and path analysis were implored for data analysis. According to the results, it was confirmed that leader's positive interactive behaviour could have an expressive influence on their follower's engagement levels, propagated their innovation and positive voice suggestions. Staffs with EWE can express innovative behaviour and pursue innovation by voluntarily performing behaviours that are not included in their roles. Hence LMX inspired employee's engagement, and the study has great theoretical and practical implications included.