Ethical Leadership, Workplace Well-Being, and Creative Performance: The Roles of Workaholism, Employee Voice, and Self-Efficacy in Saudi Arabian Travel Agencies

Abstract

Ethical leadership has become increasingly relevant to employee well-being and creative performance in Saudi Arabia’s tourism sector, where Vision 2030 emphasizes human capital development, decent work, and sustainable tourism. This study examines how ethical leadership is associated with employees’ creative performance through three resource-related mechanisms: workaholism, employee voice, and self-efficacy, among full-time employees in travel agencies. A cross-sectional survey design was employed; 1094 questionnaires were distributed and 689 usable responses were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. Ethical leadership was directly associated with higher creative performance and indirectly associated with it through lower workaholism and higher employee voice and self-efficacy. All three indirect associations were significant and reflected complementary partial mediation, indicating that the ethical leadership–creative performance relationship is associated with distinct strain-related, behavioral, and psychological pathways. The cross-sectional, single-source design and the focus on travel agencies in two major cities limit causal inference and generalizability. Practically, the findings highlight the relevance of ethical leadership for limiting workaholic tendencies while supporting employee voice, self-efficacy, and creative performance within workplace conditions aligned with Vision 2030 and sustainable employee well-being. The study contributes by integrating three theoretically distinct mediating pathways within a single resource-based framework in the underexamined context of Saudi Arabian travel agencies.