Digital transformation has become a strategic pathway toward sustainable and equitable education worldwide. For higher education English teachers, digital literacy is particularly vital for integrating technology into language teaching. However, empirical research examining the factors influencing teachers' digital literacy in underdeveloped and unevenly resourced regions such as Guizhou, China, remains limited. This study examines factors influencing the digital literacy of higher education English teachers in Guizhou, China, focusing on the mediating role of digital self-efficacy. Drawing on the Technology Acceptance Model and Social Cognitive Theory, an integrated framework was tested using PLS-SEM with data from 312 respondents. Results show that digital self-efficacy fully mediates the relationship between perceived usefulness and digital literacy, while partially mediating the relationships of perceived ease of use, professional learning communities, training, and government policy. The findings highlight the important role of self-efficacy in shaping digital literacy and offer practical implications for policymakers, administrators, and teachers. Beyond practical implications, this study contributes theoretically by explaining how perceptual factors and external supports jointly shape digital literacy through digital self-efficacy, while offering insights into the mechanisms underlying digital literacy formation in resource-constrained contexts.
Employee performance plays a crucial role in the productivity of organizations, especially in the hospitality industry in Malaysia. This work performance is influenced by leadership style, and finding the type of leadership style that is suitable to apply to employees is crucial, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Transformational leadership theory is selected for this study in determining leadership styles. There are four dimensions under transformational leadership theory, namely idealized influence, individualized consideration, inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation. Data were collected online from 400 employees working in the hospitality industry in Malaysia and analyzed using partial least square structure equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings show that only two dimensions of transformational leadership, namely idealized influence and inspirational motivation, have a significant positive influence on employee performance. Implications in the context of human resource management and recommendations to increase employee performance are also discussed.