Turning Hindrances Into Challenges: Transformational Leadership Enhances Employees' Competitive Productivity in an Artificial Intelligence‐Driven Hospitality Industry

ABSTRACT Extant understanding on the role of leadership in shaping employee perceptions of embedding artificial intelligence‐ (AI‐) enabled technologies in workplace environments as either challenges (opportunities) or hindrances (threats) is notably limited. To address this issue, a two‐wave, time‐lagged survey was conducted and usable data from 224 hospitality employees were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS‐SEM), which, in turn, highlighted the importance of transformational leadership in fulfilling the three fundamental psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in a workplace environment enabled by AI technologies. Significantly, meeting the needs for autonomy and relatedness fosters a perception of AI‐enabled technologies as challenges to overcome and facilitates the positive appraisal of hindrances. Autonomy, in particular, emerged as a key determinant of this positive perspective. Noteworthily, employees who view AI‐enabled technologies as challenges demonstrated a favorable correlation with their competitive productivity. These insights, in turn, contribute to the theoretical generalizability and extension of self‐determination theory by integrating the challenge‐hindrance appraisal framework and transformational leadership into the evolving discourse of the future of work shaped by AI‐enabled technologies.