Strategic Competitive Intelligence and Digital Leadership: Cognitive Appraisal Pathways from Digital Work Demands to Service Innovation

Abstract

Purpose: This study explains why demanding digital work can both promote and constrain service innovative performance and examines whether perceived digital leadership changes how frontline employees interpret those demands. It positions these employee-level processes as a human microfoundation of strategic competitive intelligence in digitalized hotels. Methodology/approach: Two-wave matched survey data were obtained from 453 frontline employees of five-star hotels in China. The parallel mediation and first-stage moderation model was estimated with partial least squares structural equation modeling and 5,000 bootstrap resamples. Originality/Relevance: Competitive intelligence research emphasizes organizational information routines. This study complements that perspective by examining how employees interpret the demands of enacting digital intelligence systems without treating competitive intelligence as an empirically measured construct. Key findings: Digital work demands were positively related to all three appraisals. Challenge appraisal predicted higher service innovative performance, whereas hindrance and threat appraisals predicted lower performance. The direct demand–performance path was nonsignificant after the appraisal routes were included, although the total effect remained positive. Perceived digital leadership strengthened the digital-demand relationship with challenge appraisal and weakened its relationship with threat appraisal, but did not significantly alter hindrance appraisal. Moderated mediation was supported through challenge, unsupported through hindrance, and criterion-sensitive through threat. Theoretical/methodological contributions: The findings identify cognitive appraisal as a microfoundation of intelligence-enabled service work. Digital leaders can strengthen developmental meaning and reduce anticipated loss, whereas operational obstacles require technology and workflow redesign.