Fostering Sustainable Innovation Through Communication Quality: The Sequential Role of Trust in Leadership and Organizational Commitment in Team-Based Enterprises

Abstract

Although communication quality is widely recognized as a catalyst for workplace innovation, existing research seldom integrates communication quality, trust in leadership, and organizational commitment within a single explanatory framework, particularly in team-based enterprises operating in emerging economies. This study examines how communication quality fosters employee innovation through the sequential mediating roles of trust in leadership and organizational commitment, emphasizing its contribution to sustainable enterprise performance. Rooted in Social Exchange Theory (SET), the study illustrates how transparent, reciprocal, and supportive communication enhances relational trust, strengthens employees’ emotional attachment to their organizations, and creates a climate conducive to creativity and collaborative problem-solving. A quantitative design was employed using data from employees engaged in innovation-driven projects within medium- and large-sized software firms in Turkey’s ICT sector. A total of 339 valid responses were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the hypothesized relationships. The findings demonstrate that communication quality directly promotes employee innovation and indirectly strengthens innovation through trust in leadership and organizational commitment as sequential mediators. Additionally, organizational commitment amplifies the influence of communication quality on innovation, indicating that committed employees more effectively translate constructive communication into innovative behaviors. These results underscore the strategic importance of communicative clarity, relational leadership, and commitment-building practices in shaping resilient, innovation-oriented teams. The study advances SET by identifying trust and commitment as key relational mechanisms through which communication quality drives innovation, offering theoretical enrichment and practical guidance for sustainable human resource management and team-based organizational development.

1. Introduction

Communication quality has emerged as a cornerstone of sustainable enterprise performance, shaping workplace dynamics, strengthening teamwork, and stimulating employee innovation [1]. In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) business environment, organizations increasingly rely on employees’ innovative capabilities to sustain growth, adaptability, and long-term competitiveness [2]. High-quality communication does more than ensure operational coordination—it cultivates a culture of shared meaning and collective engagement, allowing employees to co-create solutions, exchange ideas, and collaborate effectively in pursuit of common goals [3,4]. By facilitating the continuous flow of information and feedback, communication strengthens social cohesion, promotes learning, and nurtures creativity within teams, which are essential foundations for innovation and sustainable organizational development [5]. Thus, communication quality functions as a dual mechanism: cognitively enhancing coordination and clarity, while socially fostering trust, belongingness, and innovation-oriented behaviors.

Despite its critical role in organizational effectiveness, research on communication quality and innovation remains fragmented, with limited efforts to integrate relational mechanisms that explain how communication influences employee behavior [6]. Many studies have focused on individual outcomes such as job satisfaction or performance, but few have investigated how communication quality stimulates innovation through trust in leadership and organizational commitment—two relational constructs that form the backbone of team collaboration and employee engagement [7,8,9,10]. Moreover, this gap is particularly evident in team-based enterprises and emerging market contexts, such as Turkey, where interpersonal trust and collective responsibility play decisive roles in achieving performance sustainability [11,12]. To date, there remains a lack of empirical integration that connects communication quality, trust, and commitment within a single explanatory framework capable of accounting for innovation in team-based and sustainability-oriented enterprises. Addressing this empirical void is essential to understanding how communication processes contribute not only to innovation but also to the long-term social and relational sustainability of organizations.

In organizational contexts, communication quality is characterized by the clarity, accuracy, transparency, and timeliness of information shared between leaders and employees [13]. When communication is open and credible, it fosters shared understanding, reduces uncertainty, and cultivates mutual respect among team members. These qualities of communication build psychological safety—an essential precursor to creativity and innovation [14,15,16,17]—and promote a collaborative climate where employees feel empowered to express ideas and challenge assumptions. Previous research has examined trust and commitment as isolated constructs, yet there is a lack of integrated frameworks capturing their joint and sequential role in mediating the relationship between communication quality and innovation [18,19,20,21]. This study responds to that need by introducing a theoretically grounded sequential mediation mechanism that explains not only whether communication quality affects innovation but how it does so through relational pathways.

To bridge this gap, the present study explores the sequential mediation of trust in leadership and organizational commitment in the relationship between communication quality and employee innovation [22,23,24]. By conceptualizing communication quality as a strategic relational resource that enhances teamwork, the study provides insights into how interpersonal exchanges translate into creative and sustainable outcomes [25,26]. It also introduces the moderating role of organizational commitment, arguing that employees who are more affectively attached to their organizations are better able to leverage high-quality communication to produce innovative outcomes [27,28]. This approach integrates sustainability thinking with human resource management (HRM), emphasizing that effective communication, trust-based leadership, and commitment are not only operational necessities but also enablers of long-term resilience and social sustainability [29,30,31].

The study is theoretically grounded in Social Exchange Theory (SET), which asserts that social relationships within organizations are built upon reciprocal exchanges of tangible and intangible resources [32,33]. Leaders who engage in transparent, empathetic, and consistent communication foster trust by signaling fairness and reliability, prompting employees to reciprocate through loyalty, commitment, and creativity [34,35]. From a sustainability standpoint, SET provides a moral lens for understanding how equitable and trust-based communication builds social capital, enhances employee well-being, and supports long-term organizational health [36,37,38]. Therefore, communication quality can be viewed as a relational capability that transforms social exchange into innovation—a process that not only improves individual performance but also strengthens the collective capacity for sustainable growth.

The proposed model integrates communication quality, trust in leadership, organizational commitment, and employee innovation into a unified framework, hypothesizing that communication quality enhances trust, which in turn strengthens commitment and fosters innovation. This integrated model enriches understanding of how relational mechanisms—trust and commitment—mediate the communication–innovation nexus, particularly within team-based enterprises where collaboration is fundamental. Furthermore, by incorporating organizational commitment as a moderator, the model provides a nuanced understanding of how employees’ emotional bonds with their organizations amplify the benefits of effective communication, ultimately promoting sustainable innovation. Building on this theoretical foundation, the study addresses the following research questions:

• RQ1: Does communication quality positively influence employee innovation?
• RQ2: Does trust in leadership mediate the relationship between communication quality and employee innovation?
• RQ3: Does organizational commitment mediate the relationship between communication quality and employee innovation?
• RQ4: Do trust in leadership and organizational commitment sequentially mediate the relationship between communication quality and employee innovation?
• RQ5: Does organizational commitment moderate the relationship between communication quality and employee innovation, such that the relationship is stronger when organizational commitment is high?

This study makes three primary theoretical contributions. First, it extends SET by conceptualizing communication quality as a relational capability that fosters sustainable team innovation through trust and commitment. Second, it advances the understanding of sequential mediation—demonstrating that trust in leadership precedes and reinforces organizational commitment, which jointly translate communication into innovation. Third, it integrates sustainability and HRM perspectives to reveal how transparent communication practices, ethical leadership, and employee commitment collectively drive long-term organizational resilience and social well-being. Together, these contributions enrich both theory and practice by establishing communication quality as a key lever of trust-based, innovation-driven, and sustainable enterprise performance.

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents the theoretical framework and hypotheses development grounded in SET, examining how communication, trust, and commitment interact to shape innovation. Section 3 outlines the research methodology, including sample design, data collection, and analytical procedures. Section 4 presents the empirical findings using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Section 5 discusses the implications of the results for theory and practice, while Section 6 concludes the study by summarizing key insights, limitations, and directions for future research.

2. Theoretical Framework and Hypotheses Development

2.1. Social Exchange Theory

Social Exchange Theory (SET) serves as the theoretical foundation of this study, providing a coherent explanation of how workplace relationships are sustained through reciprocity, trust, and mutual commitment. Originally proposed by Blau [32] and later expanded by Cropanzano and Mitchell [33], SET posits that social behavior in organizations involves continuous exchanges of both tangible and intangible resources, guided by norms of reciprocity and fairness [39]. These exchanges create interdependence between leaders and employees, where the receipt of supportive actions—such as recognition, feedback, or empathy—generates a moral obligation to reciprocate positively [40]. Accordingly, when employees perceive fair and supportive treatment—manifested through transparent communication, recognition, and responsiveness—they are more inclined to respond with loyalty, commitment, and innovation that advance collective organizational objectives [13,41].

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that high-quality social exchange relationships foster innovation by expanding employees’ access to information, autonomy, and motivational resources essential for creative work. Meta-analytic findings [37] show that individuals embedded in high-quality social exchanges acquire richer innovative knowledge and skills, experience stronger intrinsic motivation, and develop deeper emotional attachment to their teams—each reinforcing innovative behavior [42,43,44]. Within this perspective, communication quality acts as the initial exchange resource by shaping expectations, establishing clarity, and signaling relational openness, which then elicits trust in leadership as a primary relational response and organizational commitment as a more enduring socio-emotional bond. Innovation represents the reciprocal behavioral contribution employees return when they experience high-quality exchanges, fully aligning the selection of constructs with SET’s core motivational, cognitive, and affective pathways.

Unlike Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) theory, which focuses primarily on dyadic leader–follower interactions [45], SET encompasses broader patterns of social relationships that extend across both vertical (leader–subordinate) and horizontal (peer–peer) exchanges [46,47,48]. This multidimensional nature makes SET particularly relevant to understanding how communication quality functions as a shared relational process that strengthens trust and commitment across entire teams. Although LMX captures the quality of a single leader–follower relationship, SET provides a more comprehensive basis for examining communication quality as a team-level relational climate rather than an individualized dyadic bond. Studies on LMX show that leaders form different quality relationships with each subordinate [45], yet these dyadic variations often produce mixed team-level outcomes due to differentiation effects [49,50,51]. Because this study examines communication quality as a collective and consistent relational experience, SET provides the broader theoretical scope needed to explain how employees develop generalized trust in leadership and, subsequently, stronger organizational commitment. High-quality communication serves as an initiating act of social exchange: it signals fairness, reliability, and openness, thereby enhancing employees’ perceptions of leadership integrity and organizational support. These perceptions foster reciprocal behaviors such as collaboration, engagement, and creative contribution [52,53].

SET also explains that the depth and stability of social exchanges depend on the “ideal conditions” established by leadership and the organization [54]. When leaders communicate authentically, demonstrate consistency between words and actions, and show empathy toward employees, they create psychological safety and relational trust that motivate employees to reciprocate [55]. This reciprocity gradually transforms from transactional exchanges—focused on tangible rewards or compliance—to relational exchanges rooted in identification and mutual respect [46]. Such progression leads to stronger emotional bonds and enhances the willingness of employees to engage in innovative and discretionary behaviors that benefit both the team and the organization.

In this theoretical framework, communication quality acts as the “relational infrastructure” of social exchange, enabling the development of trust and organizational commitment—the two sequential mechanisms central to SET [32,33]. Transparent and consistent communication clarifies expectations, reduces ambiguity, and nurtures a sense of inclusion among employees [25,56]. Trust in leadership reflects confidence in leaders’ competence and integrity, while organizational commitment embodies employees’ emotional attachment to the organization’s mission and values [27]. This sequence mirrors the progression of social exchange relationships described in prior research: employees first evaluate the reliability and benevolence of their leaders (trust) and then develop deeper relational bonds (commitment), which ultimately stimulate creativity and innovation as reciprocal responses [22,37,44]. Together, these constructs operationalize the principle of reciprocity, where employees’ trust and commitment emerge as reciprocal responses to fair and ethical communication practices. Such exchanges reinforce relational equity and lead to innovative behavior that strengthens organizational adaptability and resilience.

From a sustainability standpoint, SET provides an ethical and relational perspective that connects communication-driven reciprocity to broader goals of employee well-being, social capital formation, and sustainable performance [57]. Transparent and respectful communication not only promotes fairness and inclusion but also reduces interpersonal conflict and fosters collective responsibility [13]. This underscores communication quality as more than a managerial tool—it is a moral and social resource that sustains ethical leadership, nurtures a climate of trust, and aligns individual innovation with long-term organizational sustainability [58].

In summary, SET offers a comprehensive framework explaining how communication quality fosters trust and organizational commitment, which sequentially enhance employee innovation. By emphasizing reciprocity, moral obligation, and social interdependence, SET positions communication quality as a strategic relational capability that drives both performance and sustainability in team-based enterprises. Accordingly, Figure 1 illustrates the theoretical framework that underpins this study.

2.2. Communication Quality in Organizations

Communication quality within organizations extends beyond the simple transfer of information; it represents a multidimensional and dynamic construct characterized by accuracy, clarity, timeliness, and relational effectiveness [59]. High-quality communication establishes the foundation for positive workplace relationships, functioning simultaneously as a technical process for information exchange and a relational mechanism that nurtures trust, psychological safety, and commitment [60,61]. In sustainable organizational systems, communication quality constitutes a form of social infrastructure that enables teamwork, inclusivity, and shared accountability. By ensuring that communication flows are transparent and participatory, it promotes long-term organizational resilience and employee well-being, both of which are key pillars of social sustainability [57].

Trust develops when employees perceive the information they receive as reliable, truthful, and consistent. Transparent and credible communication mitigates uncertainty and fosters confidence in leadership by demonstrating honesty and fairness [13]. This open exchange minimizes ambiguity, reduces misunderstandings, and cultivates a climate of openness, thereby reinforcing interpersonal trust between leaders and employees [59]. Moreover, such communication establishes psychological safety—the sense that employees can express opinions or take risks without fear of negative consequences—which is essential for collaboration and innovation [16].

Organizational commitment is likewise strengthened when employees perceive their roles and contributions as valued and meaningful. Effective communication ensures that employees remain informed about strategic goals, organizational changes, and performance outcomes, thereby aligning individual aspirations with collective objectives and cultivating a shared sense of direction [35,62]. From a sustainability standpoint, this alignment promotes ethical behavior, inclusivity, and a sense of belonging that enhances not only productivity but also social responsibility. When employees understand how their work contributes to long-term organizational purpose, they experience greater intrinsic motivation to contribute ideas and engage in innovation [57,60].

The link between communication quality and innovation is particularly crucial for team-based enterprises operating in knowledge-intensive environments. Open and accessible communication channels facilitate information sharing, collective reflection, and constructive feedback—processes vital for stimulating creativity [4]. When communication systems prioritize collaboration, inclusivity, and learning, teams become empowered to generate, test, and refine ideas collectively [63,64,65]. This environment encourages experimentation and continuous improvement, allowing organizations to adapt to market dynamics while embedding innovation as a cultural norm. In such contexts, communication quality serves not merely as a managerial function but as a catalyst for sustainable innovation, supporting both short-term adaptability and long-term organizational vitality.

From the perspective of SET [32,33], communication quality represents the relational currency that sustains workplace reciprocity. By providing clarity, recognition, and responsiveness, leaders and organizations create social conditions that elicit positive reciprocal behaviors from employees, such as loyalty, commitment, and innovative engagement [35]. These exchanges reinforce mutual respect and generate a virtuous cycle of trust and cooperation that strengthens both team cohesion and overall performance. Through this reciprocal process, communication quality contributes not only to individual effectiveness but also to the broader social dimension of sustainability by cultivating ethical, trust-based, and adaptive work communities [66].

In essence, communication quality is more than an operational necessity—it is a strategic relational capability that integrates technical precision with emotional intelligence, bridging information flow and human connection. By fostering transparency, trust, and shared commitment, communication quality becomes a cornerstone for innovation-driven teamwork and the long-term sustainability of organizations.

2.3. Communication Quality and Employee Innovation

Communication quality is a pivotal organizational construct that directly influences employee behavior, creativity, and innovation [13]. In team-based and sustainability-oriented organizations, communication serves not only as an instrument for information dissemination but also as a relational process that binds individuals into cohesive, learning-oriented communities [24]. Effective communication fosters collective understanding, mutual accountability, and co-creation of innovative solutions, thereby forming the social foundation for sustainable innovation and adaptive performance. Drawing on SET [32,33], high-quality communication nurtures trust, respect, and reciprocity among organizational members, creating an environment where employees feel psychologically safe and encouraged to contribute novel ideas [24]. When employees perceive communication as transparent, supportive, and reciprocal, they are intrinsically motivated to engage in extra-role behaviors such as idea generation, experimentation, and collaborative problem-solving that sustain organizational competitiveness [54].

The role of communication quality in shaping innovation is further reinforced through the construct of psychological safety, which flourishes in environments characterized by openness and consistency [67,68]. Teams that experience inclusive, respectful, and transparent communication are more likely to engage in creative risk-taking and collaborative learning. Psychological safety ensures that employees can voice unconventional ideas, challenge the status quo, and share concerns without fear of criticism or reprisal [16,69]. In such settings, communication quality transforms the organizational climate into a platform for experimentation, empowering employees to take interpersonal and cognitive risks necessary for innovation [70]. Moreover, effective communication helps employees comprehend and internalize the organization’s vision, strategy, and sustainability goals, ensuring that their creative efforts are aligned with long-term strategic objectives [6].

Knowledge sharing, another essential dimension of communication quality, plays a decisive role in enabling innovation [64]. Open and bidirectional communication flows promote the exchange of diverse perspectives, facilitating the integration of ideas that stimulate creativity across functional boundaries [63,71]. Such communication practices foster a learning culture where team members collaboratively explore alternative solutions, thereby generating innovative outcomes that contribute to sustainable enterprise development [72]. Empirical research supports this linkage; organizations with robust communication systems demonstrate higher levels of employee engagement, knowledge sharing, and innovative performance [73]. Likewise, Paulus [74] revealed that effective team communication enhances idea generation, while Liang et al. [75] emphasized that communication visibility fosters innovation through improved transparency and shared understanding. Conversely, unclear, inconsistent, or delayed communication undermines morale and trust, leading to disengagement and reduced innovative initiative [4].

Synthesizing theoretical and empirical evidence, communication quality emerges as a strategic enabler of innovation within sustainable enterprises. By promoting psychological safety, knowledge exchange, and relational trust, communication quality facilitates the transformation of collective knowledge into creative outputs and adaptive practices. Organizations that prioritize open, inclusive, and transparent communication are therefore better equipped to harness employees’ inventive potential, strengthen team synergy, and sustain innovation-driven competitive advantage. Accordingly, this study proposes that:

H1. 

Communication quality is positively associated with employee innovation.

2.4. The Mediating Role of Trust in Leadership

Trust in leadership is a critical factor shaping employee attitudes and behaviors, as it reflects the confidence employees place in their leaders’ honesty, competence, and benevolence in advancing organizational interests [22]. Trust provides the foundation for effective leadership, enabling leaders to foster environments where employees feel secure, valued, and motivated to contribute beyond formal job expectations [23]. It develops progressively through consistent, transparent, and fair actions, with leaders earning credibility by demonstrating integrity, empathy, and competence in navigating challenges [34,35]. In sustainability-oriented organizations, trust in leadership also strengthens the social fabric by enhancing cooperation, promoting ethical behavior, and reinforcing long-term employee well-being and retention.

Empirical research consistently affirms the central role of leadership trust in achieving positive organizational outcomes. When employees trust their leaders, they are more inclined to engage in innovative behaviors, take calculated risks, and align their individual efforts with collective goals [23,76]. High levels of trust create an enabling environment for exploration and creativity, where employees feel psychologically safe to challenge norms and contribute to improvement initiatives. Trust has been associated with increased engagement, organizational loyalty, and innovation, while reducing counterproductive behaviors and turnover intentions [77]. In team-based enterprises, trust facilitates open dialogue, knowledge sharing, and collaborative problem-solving—cornerstones of sustainable innovation capability and resilient team performance [78,79]. Collectively, these outcomes demonstrate that trust serves as both a psychological and relational mechanism that links leadership behaviors to innovation and sustainability outcomes.

SET provides a valuable theoretical lens to explain the mediating role of trust in leadership. SET posits that social relationships are governed by reciprocal exchanges of tangible and intangible resources [32,41]. In this framework, leaders who engage in transparent communication, act fairly, and provide continuous support initiate a cycle of social reciprocity that strengthens trust [80]. Employees interpret these actions as signals of integrity and benevolence, prompting them to reciprocate with positive behaviors such as loyalty, commitment, and innovation [34]. This reciprocal dynamic extends beyond transactional interactions to establish a psychological contract—an implicit understanding that the organization values and supports its employees [81]. From a sustainability perspective, such trust-based exchanges contribute to ethical governance, social responsibility, and the creation of long-term organizational value by cultivating an inclusive and supportive work culture.

Communication quality is a fundamental antecedent of trust in leadership, serving as the medium through which fairness, transparency, and responsiveness are conveyed [60]. Leaders who maintain open communication channels, provide constructive feedback, and demonstrate empathy foster employees’ confidence to express ideas, take creative risks, and participate in innovation processes [82,83]. Through clear and consistent communication, leaders create relational equity and emotional security—key conditions that transform trust into proactive engagement and innovative performance [24]. In this sense, trust functions as the mediating mechanism that translates communication quality into positive employee outcomes such as creativity, collaboration, and organizational commitment [22,84]. By cultivating trust through communication, leaders not only inspire innovation but also strengthen organizational resilience, ensuring that innovation aligns with long-term sustainability goals. Based on this reasoning, this study hypothesizes that:

H2. 

Trust in leadership mediates the relationship between communication quality and employee innovation.

H3. 

Communication quality positively influences organizational commitment through trust in leadership.

2.5. The Mediating Role of Organizational Commitment

Organizational commitment is widely recognized as a key driver of employee behavior and organizational effectiveness. It represents the psychological attachment employees develop toward their organization and typically manifests through three dimensions: affective commitment (emotional attachment), continuance commitment (awareness of costs associated with leaving), and normative commitment (perceived obligation to remain) [27]. This multidimensional construct enhances engagement, performance, and retention, thereby strengthening overall organizational success [85,86]. Employees with strong organizational commitment often display greater loyalty, motivation, and productivity [87]. Within a sustainability framework, commitment extends beyond short-term loyalty to embody shared ethical values, social responsibility, and collaboration, contributing to the organization’s resilience and long-term viability.

The mediating role of organizational commitment in the relationship between communication quality and employee innovation has gained increasing scholarly attention. High-quality communication—characterized by clarity, openness, and mutual respect—creates a sense of fairness and belonging that encourages employees to internalize organizational goals and values [13]. When employees feel informed, appreciated, and involved in decision-making, their affective attachment to the organization strengthens [48,88]. This emotional bond motivates employees to go beyond routine performance, demonstrating greater creativity, adaptability, and initiative in solving problems and developing innovative ideas [74,89]. In team-based and sustainable organizations, this process amplifies collective engagement and fosters a climate where employees assume ownership of improvement initiatives, embedding innovation into everyday work practices. Thus, organizational commitment functions as the psychological and relational mechanism that transforms communication quality into innovative behaviors.

SET further clarifies this mediating mechanism by emphasizing reciprocity as the foundation of organizational relationships. When organizations invest in transparent and supportive communication, employees perceive this as a form of socio-emotional resource and respond with enhanced commitment and innovative engagement [32,33]. This exchange nurtures mutual trust and creates a reinforcing cycle where organizational investments in communication are reciprocated through stronger identification, loyalty, and creativity [41,48]. Such reciprocal exchanges build social capital within teams, promoting collaboration and continuous learning—key drivers of sustainable innovation [37]. In this sense, organizational commitment acts as a relational bridge that channels the effects of communication quality into innovative performance, reaffirming the principles of SET that mutual respect and fairness generate enduring value exchanges.

Empirical evidence supports this mediating role. Clear and consistent communication fosters trust, alignment, and shared purpose, which strengthen employees’ organizational commitment [24,35]. Committed employees are more likely to take initiative, contribute to collective problem-solving, and pursue novel solutions that enhance innovation capability [9,79]. This relationship underscores the critical role of organizational commitment as a mechanism that sustains employee motivation, engagement, and innovation, all of which are essential for achieving sustainable enterprise development. By mediating the relationship between communication quality and innovation, organizational commitment not only connects individual contributions to collective success but also reinforces the organization’s capacity for long-term growth and adaptability. Consequently, it is hypothesized that:

H4. 

Organizational commitment mediates the relationship between communication quality and employee innovation.

2.6. Sequential Mediation of Trust and Commitment

The sequential mediation perspective emphasizes that trust in leadership and organizational commitment jointly operate as a two-stage relational mechanism that explains how communication quality translates into employee innovation. High-quality communication—marked by clarity, accuracy, empathy, and transparency—builds a foundation of relational credibility essential for developing trust in leaders [60]. From the perspective of SET, trust emerges when leaders demonstrate integrity, competence, and benevolence through consistent, fair, and authentic communication [90]. In sustainable and team-based organizational contexts, such trust functions as a vital social resource that unites members around shared goals, facilitates collaboration, and enhances psychological safety [3]. By reducing uncertainty and signaling reliability, trust encourages employees to share ideas, engage in experimentation, and invest their creative energy in achieving collective outcomes [24]. Thus, trust serves as the initial mediating mechanism that transforms communication quality into psychological security and innovative engagement.

Once trust in leadership is established, it evolves into organizational commitment, which represents the second link in this mediation chain. Employees who trust their leaders tend to perceive alignment between personal and organizational values, reinforcing their emotional attachment and identification with organizational objectives [79,89]. This deepened commitment motivates employees to channel their trust-driven confidence into sustained innovative behavior and goal-directed persistence. Empirical evidence supports this two-step mechanism: Rai and Koodamara [91] found that trust in leaders enhances creative problem-solving, while subsequent organizational commitment amplifies employees’ willingness to propose and implement new ideas. This sequential process reflects the transformation of interpersonal trust into collective commitment, illustrating how ethical and sustainable leadership nurtures enduring motivation for creativity, collaboration, and continuous improvement [23,92].

Sequential mediation is also fully consistent with the tenets of SET, which posits that high-quality relationships develop through cycles of reciprocity and mutual reinforcement [32,33]. When leaders communicate transparently, they initiate an exchange process that builds trust; this trust, in turn, generates commitment, creating a reinforcing feedback loop of ethical interaction and relational stability [41,93]. Over time, this cyclical exchange fosters an innovation-supportive climate grounded in fairness, integrity, and mutual respect. The resulting synergy between trust and commitment enhances employees’ readiness to contribute to organizational learning and sustainable innovation. Supporting this view, Mohi Ud Din and Zhang [94] demonstrated that transparent leadership communication significantly boosts innovation through the joint mediating effects of trust and commitment. Accordingly, the sequential mediation model underscores the interdependence of these constructs—trust enables commitment, and together they convert communication quality into innovative and sustainable performance outcomes. Therefore, this study proposes that:

H5. 

Trust in leadership and organizational commitment sequentially mediate the relationship between communication quality and employee innovation.

2.7. Moderating Role of Organizational Commitment

Organizational commitment is not only a central determinant of employee behavior but also a critical boundary condition that can amplify the positive effects of communication quality on employee innovation. Employees with strong commitment to their organization are more likely to internalize its values and translate high-quality communication into proactive and creative behaviors [53,95]. Conversely, employees who lack emotional attachment or alignment with organizational goals may not perceive communication efforts as motivating or valuable, reducing their likelihood of engaging in innovation [87]. In sustainability-oriented organizations, commitment functions as a stabilizing and motivational mechanism, aligning employees’ individual values with long-term organizational objectives and fostering consistent engagement in innovation even amid uncertainty [96]. This dynamic suggests that organizational commitment moderates the relationship between communication quality and innovation, strengthening it when commitment levels are high.

From a theoretical standpoint, this moderating mechanism is rooted in SET, which emphasizes reciprocity and mutual obligation as the foundation of employee–organization relationships [32,33]. Highly committed employees interpret effective communication as a form of socio-emotional support and organizational investment, which compels them to reciprocate through loyalty, creativity, and greater involvement in innovative activities [41]. In contrast, employees with lower commitment may interpret communication exchanges merely as transactional or obligatory, limiting their engagement. This distinction highlights how commitment conditions the reciprocity process—transforming communication from a simple information exchange into a motivational driver for innovation [97].

Empirical findings reinforce this proposition. Ndlovu et al. [79] revealed that in organizations with high levels of employee commitment, the positive effect of communication quality on innovation was significantly stronger than in those with lower levels of commitment. Similarly, studies by Raza et al. [35] support that commitment magnifies the impact of communication on teamwork, creative effort, and sustainable learning. This evidence underscores the sustainability-oriented potential of commitment as a reinforcing force that amplifies communication-driven innovation, resilience, and collective adaptability.

Taken together, the moderating role of organizational commitment illustrates that it not only strengthens the communication–innovation link but also deepens the reciprocal exchanges emphasized by SET. While organizational commitment operates as a mediator in explaining how communication quality translates into innovation, its moderating role addresses when and under what conditions this relationship is strongest. Following prior research [98,99], constructs may perform distinct functional roles across relational pathways without theoretical inconsistency, provided that their mediating and moderating effects capture different dimensions of the underlying mechanism. Employees who are affectively committed are more likely to perceive organizational communication as authentic, empowering, and purposeful, channeling it into innovative behaviors that advance both personal fulfillment and collective goals. In sustainable enterprises, this mechanism highlights how cultivating commitment fosters social cohesion, ethical responsibility, and long-term adaptability—key ingredients for maintaining innovation-driven competitiveness and organizational resilience. In line with this reasoning, it is proposed that:

H6. 

Organizational commitment moderates the relationship between communication quality and employee innovation, such that the relationship is stronger when organizational commitment is high.

3. Methodology

3.1. Study Context

This study investigates how communication quality fosters employee innovation through the sequential mediation of trust in leadership and organizational commitment within Turkey’s Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) industry. The ICT sector is widely recognized as a cornerstone of Turkey’s digital economy and a catalyst for technological advancement, employing approximately 237,000 individuals as of 2023, with a substantial concentration of talent in the software development sub-sector [100]. The software segment has demonstrated a 62% growth rate between 2022 and 2023, positioning it as the most rapidly expanding and strategically significant branch of the ICT industry, generating 52.4 billion Turkish Lira in exports and accounting for 25% of the overall Information Technologies market share [100].

This growth has been driven by Turkey’s youthful and highly educated workforce, supported by technology development zones and national innovation policies that encourage entrepreneurship and digital transformation [101,102]. Accordingly, the software industry was chosen as the empirical context because it represents a high-velocity, knowledge-intensive environment where communication quality, leadership trust, and organizational commitment play crucial roles in sustaining innovation and performance [67,103,104].

3.2. Sampling and Data Collection

A targeted sampling strategy was employed to collect data from employees working in medium and large software development firms listed among the top 100 ICT companies in Turkey. These organizations represent technologically dynamic environments where communication processes and innovation practices are highly salient, aligning with prior research emphasizing that large, knowledge-intensive firms provide appropriate contexts for examining relational and behavioral outcomes [105]. General managers from 100 ICT firms were contacted to introduce the study and verify eligibility criteria. Of these, 54 firms agreed to participate, and after confirming the presence of active software development teams, 37 firms (37% organizational response rate) granted access to their employees. Team leaders and senior managers were additionally consulted to validate task structures, team composition, and project responsibilities, a procedure consistent with organizational behavior research demonstrating that contextual verification strengthens the accuracy of individual-level data [106,107].

To ensure sample adequacy, statistical power was evaluated using G*Power 3.1.9.7 following established recommendations for multivariate behavioral research [108,109]. An a priori power analysis (power = 0.95, α = 0.01, effect size = 0.10) indicated that a minimum sample of 233 participants was required for adequate statistical power. The achieved sample of 339 respondents therefore exceeded the minimum threshold, ensuring sufficient explanatory power for PLS-SEM analyses and adherence to the ten-times rule commonly applied in structural modeling [110,111]. This confirms that the dataset is statistically adequate for testing complex relational models involving sequential mediation. Data collection was conducted using an online, self-administered questionnaire distributed through official company channels [112]. Team leaders facilitated participation across functions, and respondents were informed about confidentiality, anonymity, and voluntary participation, following standard guidelines to reduce social desirability bias and enhance data authenticity [113,114].

Given the cross-sectional design of the study, all mediation results should be interpreted as relational associations rather than causal inferences. Cross-sectional data cannot establish temporal ordering among variables, and scholars have cautioned that mediation effects estimated in such designs may reflect correlational patterns rather than true temporal processes [115,116]. Accordingly, the present analysis adopts an exploratory orientation toward mediation, recognizing that longitudinal or multi-wave designs are needed to draw stronger conclusions about causal ordering. A pilot test with 20 ICT professionals was conducted prior to data collection to refine wording, confirm contextual relevance, and ensure readability of scale items. Minor linguistic adjustments were implemented to enhance clarity without altering the conceptual meaning of the items. These procedures ensured the reliability, clarity, and contextual appropriateness of the instrument used in the main data collection phase.

3.3. Demographic Profile

The survey was distributed to 800 ICT employees across 37 software development firms, yielding 339 valid responses and a 42.4% individual response rate, which aligns with accepted standards in organizational research [117]. The gender distribution indicated that 62.8% (n = 213) of respondents were male and 37.2% (n = 126) were female. This distribution reflects long-standing structural patterns in Turkey’s ICT labor market, where women remain significantly underrepresented due to enduring occupational segmentation, social inclusion challenges, and cultural norms that shape perceptions of ICT roles as male-dominated professions [118,119,120]. Empirical assessments of Turkey’s ICT sector consistently document persistent gender gaps in employment, education pathways, and specialist roles, making a male-skewed workforce an expected structural characteristic rather than a sampling anomaly [102,120,121].

The average age of respondents was 34.85 years, and 70.8% held at least a bachelor’s degree, reflecting the high educational profile commonly observed in knowledge-intensive, innovation-driven industries [26,122]. Such demographics are consistent with prior findings showing that ICT professionals typically possess advanced technical and analytical capabilities essential for creative problem-solving and innovation outcomes. Overall, the demographic characteristics align with the broader structure of Turkey’s ICT workforce and reinforce the representativeness of the sample for examining communication processes, relational mechanisms, and innovative behavior within team-based enterprise settings.

Table 1. Characteristics of the study sample.

Characteristics		Number	%
Respondent’s position	Project manager/Team leader	77	22.7
	ICT professional	262	77.3
Gender	Male	213	62.8
	Female	126	37.2
Educational level	High school degree	6	1.8
	Bachelor’s degree	240	70.8
	Master’s degree	55	16.2
	PhD degree	38	11.2
Work experience	1–5 years	78	23.0
	6–10	124	36.6
	11–15	71	20.9
	16–20	58	17.1
	>21 years	8	2.4
Firm age	<5 years	75	22.1
	5–14	106	31.3
	15–24	97	28.6
	≥25 years	61	18.0
Firm size	Medium-size (<250)	134	39.5
	Large-size (≥250)	205	60.5
Total		339	100%

summarizes the demographic characteristics of the respondents.

3.4. Operationalization of Variables

To empirically examine the proposed model, this study employed multi-item, theory-driven measurement instruments adapted from widely recognized sources to ensure both validity and reliability. The parallel translation and back-translation procedure [123] was used to preserve semantic and conceptual equivalence between English and Turkish. Initially, measurement items were translated into Turkish by a bilingual expert in organizational behavior and then back-translated into English by another bilingual academic. This rigorous linguistic procedure helped minimize translation bias and ensure that the items retained their conceptual integrity across cultural and linguistic contexts [124]. Any discrepancies were reconciled through discussion among the research team. To assess clarity, readability, and contextual relevance, a pilot study was conducted with 20 full-time employees from the Turkish ICT sector, who provided feedback on item comprehension and terminology. Based on pilot feedback, only minor wording adjustments were made to improve clarity and contextual suitability; no modifications were made to the theoretical meaning or structure of the original scales. All constructs were measured using a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 7 (“strongly agree”) to capture fine-grained variations in responses.

3.4.1. Dependent Variable

Employee Innovation (EI) was measured using a six-item scale developed by Scott and Bruce [125], which conceptualizes innovation as a multi-stage process involving idea generation, promotion, and implementation. This operationalization reflects both individual creativity and proactive engagement in organizational change [126,127]. Given the study’s focus on sustainable and team-based enterprises, the wording of certain items was contextually refined to emphasize collaborative innovation rather than purely individual creativity. This measure captures the dual emphasis on ideation and implementation that underpins sustainable innovation in contemporary team-based environments.

3.4.2. Independent Variable

Communication Quality (CQ) was assessed using a four-item scale adapted from Stewart and Gosain [59], covering clarity, adequacy, timeliness, and openness—core communication attributes essential for effective collaboration and knowledge sharing [65,67]. This scale is particularly suitable for team-based, cross-functional settings in which communication fosters psychological safety, trust, and collective learning [68]. The measure captures communication not merely as content transmission but as a relational process that facilitates innovation and sustained team performance.

3.4.3. Mediating Variables

Trust in Leadership (TL) was measured using McAllister’s [128] 11-item instrument comprising affect-based trust (five items) and cognition-based trust (six items). Affect-based trust reflects emotional attachment, mutual care, and interpersonal concern, whereas cognition-based trust captures confidence in a leader’s competence, integrity, and reliability [22]. Trust in leadership was modeled as a second-order reflective construct integrating both dimensions, consistent with research highlighting the interdependence between affective and cognitive bases of trust [76,129]. This conceptualization aligns with SET’s emphasis on reciprocal trust as a mechanism encouraging innovative behavior [32].

Organizational Commitment (OC) was measured using Meyer and Allen’s [27] 24-item instrument encompassing affective, continuance, and normative commitment. Each dimension includes eight items, and, consistent with prior empirical studies [11,130], the three dimensions were aggregated into a higher-order latent construct representing overall organizational commitment. This approach captures employees’ collective psychological attachment to their organization, aligning with sustainability-oriented management perspectives that view commitment as a unified construct comprising emotional, calculative, and moral bonds [131].

3.4.4. Control Variables

Firm age, firm size, work experience, and hierarchical position were included as control variables to account for contextual variation that may influence communication dynamics, trust development, and innovative behavior [65,67,82,132,133]. Controlling for these variables enhances the robustness of the model by ensuring that observed relationships reflect theoretical linkages rather than structural or demographic differences within the sample.

3.5. Common Method Variance

To ensure that the relationships among constructs were not influenced by common method variance (CMV), both procedural and statistical remedies were applied. Procedurally, several design-based strategies were implemented, including ensuring respondent anonymity, randomizing the order of questionnaire items, and varying scale anchors across constructs to minimize evaluation apprehension and social desirability bias [113,114]. These procedures encouraged independent and honest responses while reducing the likelihood of respondents making consistency-based or socially desirable judgments. All measurement instruments were adapted from well-established sources representing distinct conceptual domains, further reducing the potential overlap between constructs [134]. Such safeguards are particularly essential in behavioral and organizational research, where perceptual data collected from a single source may inadvertently inflate inter-construct correlations.

Statistically, multiple post hoc tests were conducted to confirm the absence of CMV. First, Harman’s single-factor test revealed that the largest single factor accounted for only 28% of the total variance, well below the 50% threshold, indicating that CMV was not a major concern [134,135]. Second, the full collinearity variance inflation factor (VIF) approach was applied, consistent with recommendations for PLS-SEM, to detect potential vertical and lateral collinearity among latent constructs. This procedure enhances CMV diagnostics by examining whether any construct behaves as a proxy for others [136]. The results showed that all VIF values ranged between 1.127 and 2.595, remaining comfortably below the recommended upper limit of 3.3 [111], which confirms that neither multicollinearity nor CMV posed a significant threat to the validity of the findings. The inclusion of the full collinearity VIF test strengthens the overall assessment and provides additional assurance that CMV is unlikely to bias the observed relationships. Together, these procedural and statistical safeguards ensure that the associations among communication quality, trust in leadership, organizational commitment, and employee innovation are theoretically meaningful rather than artifacts of common method bias.

4. Results

4.1. Data Analysis

This study employed Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS 4.1.0.9, a technique widely recognized for analyzing complex theoretical models involving sequential mediation and multiple reflective constructs [111]. Given that all latent variables represent employees’ perceptions and behavioral responses, a reflective measurement approach was applied to ensure that the indicators accurately captured their theoretical meaning [137]. The analysis followed the two-step procedure proposed by Anderson and Gerbing [138], whereby the measurement model was evaluated for reliability and validity before testing the structural paths hypothesized in the conceptual framework.

To align with current PLS-SEM guidelines, Confirmatory Composite Analysis (CCA) was conducted to evaluate the reflective measurement model, ensuring appropriate assessment of construct reliability and validity. CCA serves as the PLS-based analogue to confirmatory factor analysis and examines indicator loadings, composite reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity rather than covariance-based model fit indices [139,140,141]. The results confirmed that the proposed measurement structure demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties across all constructs, providing a robust foundation for structural model testing [142].

In addition to CCA, supplementary diagnostic procedures were applied to confirm internal consistency, discriminant validity, and predictive accuracy, thereby enhancing the transparency and rigor of the model evaluation process.

4.2. Results of the Measurement Model

A series of statistical tests were conducted to assess reliability and validity consistent with established guidelines in organizational and social science research. Cronbach’s α coefficients exceeded the recommended threshold of 0.70 for all constructs (

Table 2. Assessment of the measurement model.

Constructs/Items	Outer Loadings	VIF	Cronbach’s Alpha	CR	AVE
Trust in Leadership (TL)			0.912	0.925	0.530
Affect-based trust (AT)			0.855	0.895	0.631
AT1	0.777	1.836
AT2	0.820	1.987
AT3	0.836	1.800
AT4	0.757	1.953
AT5	0.780	1.768
Cognition-based trust (CT)			0.865	0.897	0.593
CT1	0.791	1.857
CT2	0.789	1.795
CT3	0.811	1.790
CT4	0.760	1.912
CT5	0.744	1.678
CT6	0.723	1.834
Communication Quality (CQ)			0.712	0.830	0.622
CQ1	0.856	1.633
CQ2	0.831	1.636
CQ3	0.765	1.162
CQ4 *	-	-
Organizational Commitment (OC)			0.894	0.900	0.519
Affective commitment (AC)			0.861	0.892	0.542
AC1	0.758	1.979
AC2	0.735	2.345
AC3	0.726	1.687
AC4 *	-	-
AC5	0.721	1.682
AC6	0.810	2.595
AC7	0.763	2.260
AC8	0.732	1.652
Continuance commitment (CC)			0.732	0.804	0.517
CC1	0.793	1.293
CC2	0.785	1.437
CC3	0.773	1.696
CC4 *	-	-
CC5	0.748	2.096
CC6	0.758	2.113
CC7	0.638	1.127
CC8 *	-	-
Normative commitment (NC)			0.872	0.883	0.525
NC1	0.840	2.595
NC2	0.812	2.319
NC3	0.796	2.265
NC4	0.804	2.034
NC5	0.772	1.590
NC6	0.683	1.718
NC7	0.738	1.731
NC8 *	-	-
Employee Innovation (EI)			0.897	0.921	0.660
EI1	0.825	2.232
EI2	0.782	1.879
EI3	0.793	2.247
EI4	0.820	2.536
EI5	0.819	2.418
EI6	0.833	2.307

Note: VIF = Variance inflation factor, AVE = Average variance extracted, CR = Composite reliability, * = Items deleted due to low outer loadings.

), confirming internal consistency [111,143]. Composite reliability (CR) values exceeded 0.707, demonstrating strong scale reliability [137]. Convergent validity was supported by factor loadings greater than 0.70 and average variance extracted (AVE) values above 0.50 [144], indicating that each construct captured a sufficient proportion of shared variance. These assessments constitute the core components of CCA, thereby ensuring that the reflective measurement structure is empirically sound and theoretically aligned.

To further assess discriminant validity, the heterotrait–monotrait ratio (HTMT) was employed, addressing limitations associated with the Fornell–Larcker criterion [145]. As shown in

Table 3. Discriminant validity (HTMT).

Constructs	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
1. Affective commitment	0
2. Affect-based trust	0.231	0
3. Continuance commitment	0.482	0.511	0
4. Communication Quality	0.113	0.770	0.437	0
5. Cognition-based trust	0.348	0.755	0.534	0.792	0
6. Employee Innovation	0.569	0.447	0.541	0.448	0.570	0
7. Normative commitment	0.480	0.730	0.711	0.510	0.636	0.544	0

, all HTMT values remained below 0.85, demonstrating that the constructs are empirically distinct and free from problematic overlap [111].

Collectively, the reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity results confirm that the measurement model satisfies all required psychometric criteria. This strengthened CCA-based assessment provides additional assurance regarding the validity of the measurement structure and supports progression to structural path evaluation.

4.3. Predictive Relevance and Model Fit Assessment

The predictive capability of the model was evaluated using cross-validated redundancy (Q²) values computed through the blindfolding procedure in SmartPLS [137]. All endogenous constructs demonstrated Q² values greater than zero—trust in leadership (Q² = 0.415), organizational commitment (Q² = 0.588), and employee innovation (Q² = 0.706)—indicating substantial predictive relevance [146,147]. These findings support the model’s capacity to explain meaningful variance in innovation-related outcomes.

Although PLS-SEM does not compute covariance-based global fit indices [140], several exact and approximate goodness-of-fit statistics—SRMR, NFI, d_ULS, and d_G—were examined to evaluate the adequacy of the measurement and structural models [148]. The results (SRMR = 0.062, d_ULS = 0.590, d_G = 0.325, NFI = 0.933) were within recommended cutoffs [142], confirming that the model exhibits strong internal consistency and acceptable empirical fit.

Taken together, the predictive relevance indices and model-fit diagnostics demonstrate that the model possesses robust explanatory power and empirical validity, offering a theoretically sound and statistically reliable understanding of how communication quality drives sustainable innovation through trust and organizational commitment.

4.4. Results of the Structural Model

Following the established guidelines in PLS-SEM literature, the structural model was assessed to test the hypothesized relationships and evaluate the significance of the path coefficients [138,149]. A bootstrapping procedure with 5000 resamples was conducted to ensure the robustness of statistical estimates [150]. As illustrated in Figure 2, the results confirmed that communication quality had a significant direct effect on employee innovation (H1; β = 0.152, p < 0.010), thereby supporting H1. Moreover, the findings in

Table 4. Direct, mediation and serial mediation hypotheses testing results.

Relationships	β	SE	t-Values	f-Square	p-Values	CIs		Results
						2.5%	97.5%
Direct Effects
CQ → EI	0.152 **	0.052	2.928	0.083	0.003	0.055	0.256	Supported
CQ → TL	0.635 ***	0.040	15.877	0.676	0.001	0.558	0.711	Supported
CQ → OC	0.289 ***	0.059	4.884	0.177	0.001	0.170	0.403	Supported
TL → OC	0.340 ***	0.059	5.796	0.108	0.001	0.224	0.453	Supported
TL → EI	0.206 **	0.061	3.388	0.068	0.002	0.084	0.326	Supported
OC → EI	0.438 ***	0.057	7.620	0.215	0.001	0.323	0.551	Supported
Mediation Analysis
CQ → TL → EI	0.131 **	0.041	3.156	-	0.002	0.052	0.217	Supported
CQ → TL → OC	0.216 ***	0.042	5.219	-	0.001	0.138	0.301	Supported
CQ → OC → EI	0.127 ***	0.032	3.947	-	0.001	0.069	0.197	Supported
Serial Mediation Analysis
CQ → TL → OC → EI	0.095 ***	0.022	4.279	-	0.001	0.056	0.142	Supported
Control Variables
Firm age → EI	−0.035	0.046	0.755	-	−0.124	0.055	0.450	NS
Firm size → EI	0.175 *	0.086	2.024	-	0.001	0.336	0.043	Significant
Work experience → EI	−0.032	0.047	0.675	-	−0.124	0.060	0.500	NS
Job position → EI	0.047	0.098	0.484	-	−0.143	0.241	0.628	NS

Note: CQ = Communication Quality, TL = Trust in Leadership, OC = Organizational Commitment, EI = Employee Innovation, CIs = Confidence intervals, SE = Standard error, * p-value <0.050, ** p-value < 0.010, *** p-value < 0.001, NS = non-significant.

demonstrated that communication quality positively influenced trust in leadership (β = 0.635, p < 0.001) and organizational commitment (β = 0.289, p < 0.001), highlighting the critical role of effective communication in fostering trust and commitment within organizations. Furthermore, trust in leadership was positively associated with organizational commitment (β = 0.340, p < 0.001), reinforcing its importance in shaping employee attitudes toward their organizations. The findings further revealed that both trust in leadership (β = 0.206, p < 0.010) and organizational commitment (β = 0.438, p < 0.001) had significant positive impacts on employee innovation, reinforcing their importance as antecedents to innovative behavior in the workplace (see Table 4).

The structural model also examined the mediating effects of trust in leadership and organizational commitment. As presented in Table 4, trust in leadership mediated the relationship between communication quality and employee innovation (H2; β = 0.131, p < 0.010), providing empirical support for H2. Additionally, the results indicated that communication quality indirectly influenced organizational commitment through trust in leadership (H3; β = 0.216, p < 0.001), validating H3. Similarly, organizational commitment was found to significantly mediate the association between communication quality and employee innovation (H4; β = 0.127, p < 0.001), confirming H4. Lastly, the findings in Table 4 further supported a serial mediation effect, in which trust in leadership and organizational commitment jointly mediated the link between communication quality and employee innovation (H5; β = 0.095, p < 0.001), thereby affirming H5.

With regard to control variables, the results in Table 4 indicated that firm age did not significantly impact employee innovation (β = −0.035, p = 0.450), while firm size was significantly related to employee innovation (β = 0.175, p < 0.050). Furthermore, work experience was found to have an insignificant effect on employee innovation (β = −0.032, p = 0.500), and no significant relationship was identified between job position and employee innovation (β = 0.047, p = 0.628). These findings emphasize the pivotal role of communication quality, trust in leadership, and organizational commitment as key drivers of employee innovation.

4.5. Results of the Moderation Effect

The moderating influence of organizational commitment in the relationship between communication quality and employee innovation was tested using the product-indicator approach in the PLS-SEM framework [151,152]. This approach enabled the creation of an interaction term (CQ × OC) representing the combined influence of both variables on innovation. As shown in

Table 5. Moderation analysis.

Relationships	β	SE	t-Values	p-Values	CIs		Results
					2.5%	97.5%
Moderation analysis
CQ × OC → EI	0.119 **	0.036	3.308	0.002	0.050	0.194	Supported

Note: CQ = Communication Quality, OC = Organizational Commitment, EI = Employee Innovation, CIs = Confidence intervals, SE = Standard error, ** p-value < 0.010.

, the interaction term was significant and positive (β = 0.119, p < 0.010), thereby supporting H6 and confirming that organizational commitment amplifies the positive impact of communication quality on innovation. This suggests that employees who are deeply committed to their organization are more likely to transform open communication into creative and proactive behaviors.

Figure 3 visually illustrates this interaction, showing that when commitment is high, the slope of the relationship between communication quality and innovation is steeper, indicating a stronger positive effect. This pattern demonstrates that organizational commitment functions as a catalyst that strengthens the translation of effective communication into innovative work outcomes. From a managerial viewpoint, these findings highlight the strategic importance of fostering a committed workforce through inclusive communication practices and trust-based leadership structures to sustain innovation performance across teams.

4.6. Explanatory Power of the Structural Model

The explanatory power of the structural model was assessed using the coefficient of determination (R²) and effect size (f²) to evaluate both overall predictive accuracy and the relative contribution of each exogenous construct [137,153]. In behavioral research, R² values exceeding 0.20 are typically considered acceptable for demonstrating meaningful explanatory strength [154]. All endogenous variables in this study surpassed that benchmark, confirming the model’s robustness in explaining employee attitudes and innovation outcomes. Specifically, trust in leadership (R² = 0.403), organizational commitment (R² = 0.324), and employee innovation (R² = 0.413) represent substantial explanatory capacity, indicating that communication quality, trust, and commitment collectively shape innovation behaviors in team-based enterprises. These findings demonstrate that the proposed framework effectively integrates relational and psychological mechanisms that drive innovation in knowledge-intensive work environments.

Complementing R², f² effect sizes were computed to determine each construct’s individual influence on its dependent variable [15,111]. The results, summarized in Table 4, show that communication quality (CQ) exerts a large effect on trust in leadership (f² = 0.676), moderate effects on organizational commitment (f² = 0.177) and employee innovation (f² = 0.083), while trust in leadership (TL) shows moderate impact on commitment (f² = 0.108) and a smaller effect on innovation (f² = 0.068). Organizational commitment (OC) exhibits a moderate-to-strong effect on innovation (f² = 0.215). According to Cohen’s [153] guidelines—0.02 (small), 0.15 (medium), and 0.35 (large)—these results highlight that communication quality and organizational commitment are the primary levers driving innovation through trust-based pathways. Theoretically, this confirms that effective communication fosters trust and commitment, which mediate innovative behavior [26], while from a managerial standpoint, transparent communication and supportive leadership climates are essential to sustain innovation-oriented cultures in dynamic organizational contexts.

4.7. Strength of Moderating Effect

The moderating effect was evaluated by comparing the R² values of the model with and without the moderator, following the procedure proposed by Henseler and Fassott [151]. The magnitude of the moderating influence was quantified using Cohen’s [153] f² formula, which measures the incremental explanatory variance contributed by the moderator variable. According to Cohen’s [153] guidelines, f² values of 0.02, 0.15, and 0.35 represent small, medium, and large effects, respectively. The analysis revealed an f² value of 0.252 (

Table 6. Strength of moderating effects.

Interaction Effect	R2		f2	Effect Size
	R2 with the Moderator	R2 Without the Moderator
CQ × OC → EI	0.413	0.265	0.252	Moderate

), indicating a moderate effect size and confirming that organizational commitment significantly strengthens the impact of communication quality on employee innovation. This finding demonstrates that the presence of high organizational commitment amplifies the positive influence of effective communication on innovative behavior, as committed employees are more motivated to translate shared knowledge into creative actions.

4.8. Post Hoc Analyses

To further evaluate the robustness of the proposed relationships and deepen insight into how different facets of organizational commitment operate within the model, a series of post hoc analyses were conducted. These analyses disaggregated commitment into its affective, continuance, and normative components to examine whether each dimension contributed uniquely to the mediation and moderation processes. This approach provides a more fine-grained assessment of the relational mechanisms through which communication quality influences innovative behavior. The results showed that the core model remained stable, with communication quality maintaining a significant direct effect on employee innovation as well as an indirect effect through trust in leadership. When the three commitment dimensions were examined separately, affective commitment emerged as the only meaningful mediator, indicating that employees’ emotional attachment to the organization plays a central role in translating communication processes into innovative actions. Continuance and normative commitment did not exhibit significant indirect effects in simple mediation pathways. In sequential mediation, only the affective commitment pathway (CQ → TL → AC → EI) was statistically significant, further reinforcing the importance of affective bonds in sustaining innovation within team-based enterprises. Moderation analyses revealed that only normative commitment significantly amplified the link between communication quality and innovation, suggesting that employees who experience a strong sense of moral duty toward their organization respond more strongly to high-quality communication. Full statistical details of these analyses are provided in Appendix A (

Table A1. Post Hoc Analysis Results for Commitment Dimensions.

Path Tested	β	p-Value	Significance
Direct and Simple Mediation Effects
CQ → EI	0.188	<0.001	Significant
CQ → TL → EI	0.177	<0.010	Significant
Trust in Leadership → Commitment Dimensions (Simple Mediation)
CQ → TL → AC	0.133	<0.010	Significant
CQ → TL → CC	0.191	<0.001	Significant
CQ → TL → NC	0.317	<0.001	Significant
Commitment Dimensions → Employee Innovation (Simple Mediation)
CQ → AC → EI	0.086	<0.010	Significant
CQ → CC → EI	0.038	>0.100	Not significant
CQ → NC → EI	0.036	>0.100	Not significant
Sequential Mediation (CQ → TL → Commitment Dimension → EI)
Sequential via AC	0.055	<0.010	Significant
Sequential via CC	0.017	>0.100	Not significant
Sequential via NC	0.023	>0.100	Not significant
Moderation Effects (CQ × Commitment Dimensions → EI)
CQ × AC → EI	−0.011	>0.100	Not significant
CQ × CC → EI	0.007	>0.100	Not significant
CQ × NC → EI	0.112	<0.050	Significant

Notes: CQ = Communication Quality; TL = Trust in Leadership; AC = Affective Commitment; CC = Continuance Commitment; NC = Normative Commitment; EI = Employee Innovation.

) for transparency and completeness.

4.9. Summary of Findings

The results collectively confirm that communication quality functions as a critical organizational resource that nurtures trust-based relationships and fosters commitment, ultimately driving sustainable innovation within team-based enterprises. Drawing on SET [32,33], the findings demonstrate that transparent, reciprocal communication enhances employees’ confidence in leadership and strengthens their emotional attachment to the organization, which together create a supportive climate for innovation. The sequential and moderating mechanisms identified in the model emphasize that effective communication does not operate in isolation but interacts dynamically with trust and commitment to reinforce innovation-oriented behaviors. In addition, the supplementary post hoc analyses provide further empirical robustness by showing that affective commitment plays the most prominent role in linking communication processes to innovative behavior, while normative commitment modestly enhances the communication–innovation relationship. This integrative model underscores that fostering open communication channels, empowering leadership trust, and cultivating a committed workforce are mutually reinforcing processes essential for sustaining innovation and long-term organizational effectiveness. A complete summary of all hypothesis tests is presented in

Table 7. Hypothesis Testing Summary.

Hypothesis	Relationship Tested	Result	Supported
H1	CQ → EI	Direct effect	Supported
H2	CQ → TL → EI	Mediation effect	Supported
H3	CQ → TL → OC	Mediation effect	Supported
H4	CQ → OC → EI	Mediation effect	Supported
H5	CQ → TL → OC → EI	Serial mediation	Supported
H6	CQ × OC → EI	Moderation effect	Supported

Note: CQ = Communication Quality; TL = Trust in Leadership; OC = Organizational Commitment; EI = Employee Innovation.

, with extended post hoc results reported in Appendix A (Table A1).

5. Discussion

This study investigated the role of communication quality in driving employee innovation through the sequential mediation of trust in leadership and organizational commitment, while also examining the moderating influence of commitment. The findings provide robust empirical evidence for the proposed model and deepen understanding of how socially embedded communication processes stimulate innovative behavior in team-based enterprises.

First, communication quality was found to be a strong predictor of employee innovation, reaffirming that transparent, reliable, and interactive communication systems are central to creativity and knowledge sharing [24,72,73]. Such communication practices foster a climate of openness that reduces uncertainty, promotes voice behavior, and enhances the psychological safety required for idea generation and experimentation. In sustainable organizations, communication visibility further amplifies collaborative intelligence and collective adaptability, enabling teams to co-create solutions that align with both performance and sustainability goals [75]. These results position communication quality as a strategic intangible resource that underpins social capital and shared learning—cornerstones of long-term organizational resilience.

Second, trust in leadership emerged as a vital relational mechanism linking communication quality to innovation. Leaders who communicate authentically, listen empathetically, and act with transparency build psychological safety and credibility that embolden employees to take creative risks and share unconventional ideas [34,68]. This finding is consistent with research demonstrating that trust functions as a relational lubricant that transforms information exchange into meaningful collaboration [11,60]. Moreover, the results indicate that communication quality not only nurtures trust but also strengthens employees’ emotional attachment to organizational goals, thereby embedding innovation within the ethical and social fabric of the enterprise [34,82,84]. From a sustainability perspective, this underscores trust as a relational asset that enables ethical engagement, collective accountability, and the long-term pursuit of shared value.

Third, the mediating role of organizational commitment reinforces its importance as a bridge between relational quality and innovative outcomes. Consistent with prior studies, employees who identify strongly with their organizations exhibit greater intrinsic motivation to engage in creative problem-solving and continuous improvement [48,97]. The sequential mediation of trust and commitment demonstrates a relational chain: transparent communication builds trust; trust nurtures commitment; and commitment translates into innovation. This process aligns with SET’s principle of reciprocity, wherein positive exchanges generate sustained cooperation and innovative reciprocity [79,91,92,131]. Within sustainability-oriented firms, such relational pathways convert social trust into innovative capabilities that support ethical responsibility and team cohesion.

Finally, the moderating role of organizational commitment indicates that high-commitment contexts magnify the benefits of effective communication. Employees who are deeply invested in organizational success utilize communication channels more effectively to collaborate, adapt, and innovate [11,96]. This finding resonates with evidence that committed employees sustain innovative momentum by aligning personal and collective aspirations toward long-term organizational growth [23,88,97]. From a managerial lens, commitment acts as an amplifying force that stabilizes innovation cycles, ensuring continuity and resilience in team-based innovation ecosystems.

In addition, the post hoc analyses offered further nuance by examining how the three components of organizational commitment—affective, continuance, and normative—operate within the broader communication–innovation process. Although the primary model treated commitment as an aggregate construct, the supplementary analyses revealed that only affective commitment consistently mediated the link between communication and innovation, while continuance and normative commitment did not exhibit meaningful indirect effects. Furthermore, normative commitment demonstrated a modest strengthening of the communication–innovation pathway in the moderation tests. While these findings were exploratory, they highlight that the emotional dimension of commitment plays a particularly influential role in transforming communication quality into innovative behavior. Such insights open important avenues for future research to more precisely theorize how distinct commitment forms may shape collaborative dynamics and innovation in team-based settings.

Overall, the findings affirm that communication quality operates as a multidimensional social resource that cultivates trust, commitment, and innovation in a mutually reinforcing manner. By conceptualizing communication as a strategic capability embedded in social exchange relationships, this study bridges micro-level relational processes with macro-level sustainability outcomes. The evidence suggests that when communication is authentic and trust-based, it strengthens organizational commitment and innovation simultaneously—creating a synergistic pathway that advances both enterprise performance and sustainable development.

6. Conclusions

6.1. Theoretical Implications

This study advances the theoretical domain of SET by revealing the sequential mediating roles of trust in leadership and organizational commitment in the relationship between communication quality and employee innovation. While SET traditionally emphasizes reciprocal exchanges that foster trust and mutual benefit [32,33,40], this research extends its application by unpacking the multi-level mechanisms through which communication quality transforms into innovation-oriented outcomes. The study demonstrates that communication quality initiates a relational process in which trust establishes psychological safety and credibility, leading to stronger organizational commitment and ultimately innovative behavior. This theoretical linkage underscores communication as a strategic antecedent of innovation, illustrating how social and relational exchanges rooted in communication can serve as a platform for creativity, collaboration, and collective learning [37,38,41]. By integrating SET with sustainability perspectives, the study further positions trust and commitment as drivers of long-term collaboration, ethical engagement, and resilient enterprise performance—key dimensions of sustainable organizational systems.

A major contribution of this research lies in identifying the dual function of organizational commitment as both a mediator and moderator. As a mediator, commitment channels the positive influence of communication into innovation; as a moderator, it strengthens the relationship between communication quality and innovation outcomes. This dual perspective redefines commitment as an active relational mechanism rather than a static attitudinal variable. From a sustainability standpoint, it highlights that committed employees act as agents of continuity and ethical stewardship, ensuring that innovative practices evolve into sustained, value-driven routines that enhance both organizational resilience and team cohesion [87,91,96,131].

Beyond SET, the findings also resonate with insights from LMX theory, which emphasizes the relational quality of dyadic leader–follower interactions. While SET provides a broad framework for understanding reciprocal exchanges across entire teams, LMX offers a complementary lens by explaining how high-quality communication shapes trust within leader–member relationships [45]. The current findings align with this perspective, showing that transparent and supportive communication enhances perceptions of leader credibility, which in turn fosters deeper organizational commitment and innovative engagement [48]. By integrating SET’s emphasis on broad social reciprocity with LMX’s focus on relational dyads, this study illustrates that sustainable innovation is strengthened through both collective communication climates and high-quality leader–employee exchanges. This relational synthesis further reinforces the view that trust-driven communication is a foundational capability for building adaptive and innovation-oriented teams [52,53].

Similarly, the study bridges SET and the psychological safety perspective [16], advancing understanding of how trust-based exchanges cultivate a safe environment for creative expression. Psychological safety explains why employees feel comfortable engaging in innovation, while this study clarifies the relational infrastructure behind that feeling—showing that high-quality communication fosters trust in leadership, which strengthens commitment and drives innovation [17,68,70]. This relational sequence provides a sustainable psychological foundation that enhances both employee well-being and collective adaptability, reinforcing the interconnection between micro-level motivation and macro-level sustainability.

Taken together, these insights highlight the originality and theoretical breadth of the study. It not only expands SET by specifying sequential and conditional mechanisms but also complements the LMX and psychological safety perspectives by illustrating how relational communication practices convert social trust into sustained innovation capacity. By conceptualizing trust and commitment as dynamic relational drivers that link communication quality to innovation and sustainability, this study offers an integrative understanding of how social exchange mechanisms underpin adaptive, resilient, and sustainable organizational performance.

6.2. Practical Implications

The findings of this study provide valuable insights for managers and organizational leaders aiming to promote innovation and long-term sustainability through effective communication strategies. In today’s highly dynamic business environment, communication quality functions not merely as a coordination mechanism but as a strategic resource that enhances collaboration, trust, and shared accountability across teams [34]. This underscores the necessity for managers to view communication as an organizational capability that fuels innovation and builds adaptive, learning-oriented cultures capable of responding to rapid market and environmental changes.

First, transparent, consistent, and responsive communication should be institutionalized as a managerial norm rather than a sporadic activity. Leaders must create systematic communication frameworks—such as feedback-driven dialogues, digital collaboration systems, and sustainability-focused knowledge-sharing sessions—to reduce ambiguity, strengthen psychological safety, and nurture creative engagement [13,57,155]. When employees perceive that communication flows openly and equitably, they are more inclined to propose innovative ideas aligned with the firm’s sustainability objectives. Thus, effective communication not only drives innovation but also fosters social sustainability by reinforcing inclusiveness and respect for diverse perspectives.

Second, the results affirm that trust in leadership represents a central managerial asset that converts communication quality into innovative energy. Leaders who demonstrate integrity, empathy, and moral clarity enhance employees’ psychological security and commitment to shared goals [34]. To operationalize this, organizations should implement structured leadership development programs emphasizing ethical decision-making, interpersonal sensitivity, and relational communication. Such programs ensure that trust-building behaviors are embedded in daily management practices, promoting a climate where innovation and sustainability coevolve through ethical and transparent leadership.

Third, organizational commitment emerged as both a mediating and moderating mechanism, signaling its importance in aligning individual motivation with corporate sustainability goals. Managers can cultivate deeper commitment by integrating employee-driven initiatives into sustainability planning—such as green innovation challenges, community engagement projects, and co-created CSR programs [35,156]. These participatory approaches enhance employees’ sense of ownership and belonging while channeling commitment toward environmentally and socially responsible innovation outcomes. Such alignment transforms commitment from a static attitude into a dynamic force for sustainable change.

Fourth, organizations should invest in cultivating psychologically safe environments where employees feel encouraged to take creative risks and express new ideas without fear of negative evaluation [69]. This involves training managers to respond constructively to failure, facilitating interdepartmental knowledge exchange, and rewarding learning-based experimentation. When embedded within team culture, these practices directly translate communication quality into innovative performance, reinforcing resilience, adaptability, and team cohesion.

Finally, to ensure consistent and measurable impact, organizations should institutionalize sustainability-oriented communication programs. These may include leadership mentorship initiatives, participatory innovation labs, and ESG-integrated communication frameworks that embed trust, inclusion, and ethical leadership into daily routines [23,38,58,152]. By aligning these programs with team-level sustainability metrics, managers can create an organizational ecosystem in which communication, trust, and commitment continuously reinforce innovation and sustainable competitiveness.

6.3. Limitations and Future Research Directions

This study offers important contributions to understanding how communication quality fosters sustainable innovation, yet several limitations warrant consideration. Because the research employed a cross-sectional design, causal interpretations among communication quality, trust in leadership, organizational commitment, and innovation remain tentative. Future research should adopt longitudinal or time-lagged designs to examine how these relational mechanisms unfold over time and to strengthen causal inference. Although procedural and statistical remedies were implemented to reduce common method variance, the reliance on self-reported data may still introduce perceptual bias; multi-source approaches—such as incorporating supervisor ratings of innovation or peer-based trust assessments—would enhance construct validity. The study’s focus on a single national context may also limit generalizability, suggesting the value of cross-cultural designs to examine how communication norms and relational expectations differ across cultural settings. Additionally, gender imbalance in the sample represents an important contextual limitation, as prior research indicates potential gender-linked differences in communication responsiveness, trust formation, and commitment patterns [157,158]. Future studies should pursue more balanced sampling strategies to capture these nuances.

Future research should also deepen the examination of organizational commitment and its dimensional structure. Post hoc analyses revealed that affective, continuance, and normative commitment operate differently across mediating and moderating pathways, underscoring the need for theoretical precision when incorporating these components into relational models. Scholars are encouraged to analyze commitment dimensions separately within sequential or conditional process frameworks to better isolate their unique contributions. Future work could also explore how contextual variables—such as leadership style, ethical climate, or digital communication systems—shape differences among commitment components. As organizations increasingly rely on AI-supported communication platforms, hybrid collaboration tools, and digital workflows, subsequent studies should investigate how these technologies influence trust-building processes and innovation-oriented behavior [159]. Collectively, these directions offer promising avenues to refine theoretical clarity, enhance methodological rigor, and extend understanding of communication quality as a relational capability that cultivates sustainable innovation.