The rapid evolution of the digital economy necessitates a profound shift in organizational leadership, particularly within service industries. A recent study delves into the critical role of "digital leadership" in navigating this transformation, highlighting how it empowers employees through proactive behaviors like job crafting and innovative work behavior to enhance task performance. The research, conducted among 415 hotel employees in China’s service sector, provides compelling evidence that these employee-driven actions are key mediators between effective digital leadership and successful digital transformation. This nuanced understanding offers valuable insights for enterprises aiming to foster adaptability and improve performance in an increasingly digitized world. The Imperative of Digital Leadership in a Transforming Landscape Digitalization has fundamentally reshaped the global business environment, making sustained employee performance a cornerstone of long-term competitive advantage and sustainable development. As technological change accelerates, digital transformation has become an inevitable strategic choice for enterprises seeking to maintain agility, ensure operational efficiency, and secure future growth. However, this transformation presents significant challenges, often widening the gap between employee performance and organizational expectations, thereby diminishing the effectiveness of change initiatives. To bridge this divide, organizations must cultivate a proactive leadership style that mobilizes employee initiative and unlocks their full potential. In this context, digital leadership emerges as a pivotal driver of change. By articulating a clear digital vision and allocating necessary resources, digital leaders can inspire employees to actively reshape their work and engage in innovative behaviors, ultimately creating value and bolstering organizational adaptability. This is particularly crucial in the service industry, where digitalization has moved beyond a mere support function to become a strategic lever for enhancing service quality, business flexibility, and customer engagement. Despite increasing investments in digital transformation within the service sector, the underlying employee-level mechanisms have remained largely underexplored. The research aims to illuminate how digital leaders can foster employee capacity-building and role adaptation to propel organizational transformation and elevate performance. The study, drawing upon Dynamic Capability Theory (DCT) and the Resource-Based View (RBV), positions job crafting and innovative work behavior as critical mediators linking leadership to organizational transformation and adaptation. When organizations provide adequate technological tools and support, employees are more likely to proactively reconfigure their tasks, experiment with new methodologies, and leverage digital resources to optimize their work. This proactive engagement not only drives individual improvement but also fosters a positive atmosphere conducive to organizational transformation. While previous research has independently affirmed the benefits of job crafting and innovative work behaviors for organizational change, systematic empirical evidence detailing their cooperative role between digital leadership and transformation outcomes has been limited. This study seeks to fill this void by proposing a parallel mediation model to examine how employee behaviors mediate the relationship between digital leadership, digital transformation, and ultimately, digital-enabled task performance. Unpacking the Mechanisms: Job Crafting and Innovative Work Behavior Job crafting, defined as the proactive modification of tasks, interpersonal dynamics, and the cognitive meaning of one’s work, is identified as a crucial employee response to digital transformation. Employees who engage in job crafting are better equipped to align their roles with their skills, values, and aspirations, making them more adaptable and responsive to the complexities of a changing environment. From a theoretical standpoint, job crafting is viewed as a micro-level dynamic capability, allowing employees to perceive changes in the digital work landscape and reconfigure their roles accordingly. It also represents valuable, difficult-to-imitate human and behavioral resources that enhance organizational adaptability and support sustainable competitive advantage. Digital leadership plays a significant role in fostering job crafting by creating an environment of trust, empowerment, and encouragement for exploration and innovation. Through a clear digital vision, investment in employee technical capabilities, and the legitimization of experimentation, digital leaders can enhance employees’ sense of autonomy and role flexibility, thereby reducing the perceived risks associated with modifying job roles. Empowered employees are thus more inclined to optimize task processes, proactively seek resources, and redesign service processes to meet the evolving demands of digital transformation. The study hypothesizes that digital leadership positively influences employee job crafting (H2a), which in turn positively affects digital transformation (H2b), with job crafting mediating this relationship (H2c). Similarly, innovative work behavior, encompassing the generation, promotion, and implementation of novel ideas, is recognized as a key mechanism for realizing digital transformation. Employees exhibiting this behavior actively address complex challenges, propose digital solutions, advocate for technology adoption, and experiment with new tools. This is particularly vital in technology-centric service sectors that require agile responses and continuous innovation. Digital leadership can stimulate innovative work behavior by empowering employees to identify opportunities, experiment with solutions, and translate ideas into actionable improvements. This not only enhances organizational innovation capacity and adaptability but also aligns individual creativity with strategic organizational goals. The research posits that digital leadership positively impacts employee innovative work behavior (H3a), which in turn positively influences digital transformation (H3b), with innovative work behavior mediating this relationship (H3c). The Tangible Impact: Digital Transformation and Task Performance Digital transformation, characterized by the integration of digital technologies into all facets of an organization, fundamentally reconstructs operational processes, technical systems, and business models. This process enhances operational agility, optimizes workflows, and reshapes task structures, leading to improved efficiency and responsiveness. Digital transformation enables organizations to better leverage digital resources to enhance employee task performance. From the perspective of DCT, digital transformation equips organizations with the capability to sense market volatility, capitalize on technological advancements, and reconfigure internal processes to adapt to change. The introduction of digital technologies, such as automation and real-time communication tools, profoundly alters how tasks are executed, ultimately boosting individual performance. Digital-enabled task performance specifically refers to employees’ ability to improve work efficiency and task quality through the utilization of advanced digital technologies. This performance is contingent not only on the availability of clear tasks and technical resources but also on a data-driven culture and employee digital self-efficacy. It encapsulates the quality of work, response speed, problem-solving capabilities, and adaptability of employees in complex tasks. Studies have consistently shown a significant positive relationship between digital transformation and employee performance improvements, as systems integration and data visualization can reduce task complexity and accelerate workflows. The study hypothesizes that digital transformation positively affects employee digital-enabled task performance (H4). Furthermore, it posits that digital transformation mediates the relationship between digital leadership and employee digital-enabled task performance (H5). Crucially, the research also explores sequential mediation effects: digital leadership influences job crafting, which then contributes to digital transformation, ultimately impacting task performance (H6). Similarly, digital leadership influences innovative work behavior, which in turn drives digital transformation and subsequently enhances task performance (H7). Methodological Rigor and Empirical Findings The study employed a robust methodology, utilizing validated scales for measuring digital leadership, job crafting, innovative work behavior, digital transformation, and digital-enabled task performance. Data were collected from 415 full-time frontline employees in digitally advanced hospitality organizations in China, employing a purposeful snowball sampling strategy to reach this specific demographic. Control variables such as firm size, years of establishment, and employee demographics were also included. To ensure data quality and minimize potential biases, comprehensive procedural and statistical remedies were implemented. These included pre-testing the questionnaire, ensuring anonymity and confidentiality, randomizing item order, and conducting Harman’s single-factor test to assess common method bias. Statistical analysis was performed using Smart PLS 4.0, employing partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), a method well-suited for predictive and explanatory research with complex mediating structures and potentially non-normally distributed data. The measurement model demonstrated strong internal consistency, reliability, and validity, with all constructs meeting the recommended criteria for factor loadings, Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability (CR), and average variance extracted (AVE). Discriminant validity was confirmed through inter-construct correlations, the square root of AVE, and the Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio (HTMT). Multicollinearity was also addressed, with all variance inflation factor (VIF) values falling well within acceptable limits. The structural model analysis yielded significant findings, strongly supporting the proposed hypotheses. Digital leadership was found to have a significant positive impact on digital transformation, job crafting, and innovative work behavior. Both job crafting and innovative work behavior were positively associated with digital transformation, and digital transformation, in turn, positively influenced digital-enabled task performance. The mediation analyses confirmed that job crafting and innovative work behavior partially mediate the relationship between digital leadership and digital transformation. Furthermore, digital transformation was found to mediate the link between digital leadership and task performance. Most notably, the study provided empirical support for the sequential mediation pathways, demonstrating how digital leadership influences job crafting and innovative work behavior, which then collectively contribute to digital transformation and ultimately enhance digital-enabled task performance. Implications and Future Directions The study’s findings offer substantial theoretical and managerial contributions. Theoretically, it integrates organizational and employee-level factors into a comprehensive framework, clarifying the behavioral pathways through which digital leadership drives digital transformation and improves task performance in service-oriented organizations. It highlights the micro-level mechanisms of employee behavior as critical foundations for successful transformation, particularly emphasizing the combined impact of job crafting and innovative work behavior. By reinforcing the distinction between digital leadership as an empowering force and digital transformation as an organizational outcome, the research contributes to a more precise theoretical understanding of their relationship. Managerially, the findings provide actionable insights for hotel decision-makers. Organizations are urged to cultivate an environment that encourages digital leadership, supporting flexible and performance-centered human resource policies. Investing in employee capacity development programs, fostering cross-functional collaboration platforms, and aligning digital systems with workflows are crucial for sustaining employee initiative and promoting successful digital transformation. The study underscores the importance of actively engaging employees in the digital journey, enabling them to leverage digital tools effectively, optimize service processes, and adapt to evolving technological landscapes. However, the study acknowledges certain limitations. The cross-sectional, self-report design may constrain causal inferences and introduce potential common method bias. Future research could benefit from longitudinal or multi-source data collection to strengthen causal claims. Additionally, the focus on China’s hospitality industry may limit the generalizability of findings to other cultural and industrial contexts. Cross-industry and cross-national studies would enhance the robustness of the research. Finally, the reliance on linear modeling methods might not fully capture complex non-linear dynamics. Future studies could explore alternative analytical approaches to delve deeper into these nuances. Despite these limitations, the research provides a valuable and empirically grounded understanding of how digital leadership can effectively steer service-oriented organizations through digital transformation by empowering their workforce. Post navigation AI Literacy as Both Bridge and Buffer: Unraveling Its Dual Role Between Research Stressors and Teaching Excellence
