R&D员工领导创新期望、内部动机与创新行为研究

在现代组织行为研究领域推动员工创造、创新的组织行为研究是一个热点问题。本文通过对我国跨地区企业研发员工的问卷调查研究对领导创新期望、员工内部工作动机及其创新行为间的关系进行了实证探讨。研究发现,在我国背景下,直属领导对下属员工的创新期望、员工之间横向交换对研发员工创新的行为都具有正向预测作用,其中员工内在工作动机在领导创新期望、员工横向交换对员工创新行为的作用路径关系中起到中介效应。本研究的调查结论不仅有助于加深我们对组织内员工创新行为推动和作用机制的深入了解,同时也会对我国企业,特别是高新技术企业推动员工创新的管理实践提供借鉴。

The Relationships among Innovative Expectations from Leaders,Intrinsic Motivations, and Innovative Behaviors of R&D Employees

"Innovation" has been an important topic in business and management fields after entering the Knowledge Age.Individual employees are essential to innovation and creative activities.Therefore,understanding factors that can influence employees’ innovative behaviors has been an important topic in the literature on organizational innovation. Although the recent literature has widely studied management incentives in the enterprise innovation,most of them focus on the topic at business and organizational levels.Limited research has been conducted on the systematic understanding of antecedents for an employee’s innovative behavior at the individual level. This empirical study surveyed R&D staff in different regions in China.We further analyzed the data with regard to the effect of a leader’s innovation expectation and the member exchange on employees’ intrinsic motivation and innovative behaviors.Analysis results showed that both the leader’s innovative expectation and employees’ horizontal exchange have a positive effect on an employee’s intrinsic motivation and innovative behaviors.An employee’s intrinsic motivation has a direct effect on the innovative behavior of staff.In addition,the leader’s innovative expectation and employees’ horizontal exchange can influence an employee’s innovative behaviors through intrinsic motivation;that is,an employee’s intrinsic motivation plays a partial mediator role for the relationship among leader’s innovative expectation,an employee’s horizontal exchange and an employee’s innovative behaviors.The findings of this study can deepen our understanding of the interaction mechanism of innovative behaviors within the organization,enrich the current organization management literature,and offer great lessons for Chinese high-tech enterprises to promote employees’ innovation First of all,the management literature shows that promoting innovate leadership is usually based on process rather than administrative orders,and communication,guidance,coordination and management support are three important managerial elements.This study shows that a leader needs to encourage,protect,give feedback,recognize,and reward employees for their innovations.Therefore,leadership strategy is critical to employees’ innovation.Other managerial behaviors include showing empathy,patience,kindness,and support for innovative employees,exchanging new ideas,promoting creative thinking among organizational members,as well as encouraging employees to make suggestions and comments,and participating in the decision-making process.These behaviors have the potential of enhancing employees’ intrinsice motivation,thereby promoting innovative activities.Second,innovation is often accompanied by high risk and uncertainty,an employee’s "ideas" or creative thinking are often subject to pressure,criticism or attack from the organization.As a result,employees are often reluctant to share their new ideas. This research shows that high levels of horizontal exchange will help employees obtain more relevant resources required for innovation,avoid mutual negative attacks and criticism,and get mutual recognition,support and reward.The internal communication among employees can further create more opportunities for innovation.The research result supports the conclusions of Jeroen and Deanne,demonstrating that mutual support between employees will lead to more individual innovation output. In addition,intrinsic motivation is an important trait which can enhance an employee’s creativity and promote their innovative behaviors.This study also finds that a leader’s innovative expectation and an employee’s horizontal exchange can influence an employee’s innovative behavior through intrinsic motivation.Moreover,this research clarifies that intrinsic work motivation plays a key mediator role in the situational factors and individual innovation. The above research extends the of the existing study on the direct effect of leadership behavior,work team exchange and other organizational behavior variables on organization internal innovation in Chinese context.Another contribution is to enrich the relationship discussion between motivation orientation and innovative behavior of employees.We also test the model that an employee’s intrinsic motivation partially mediates the relationship between a leader’s innovation expectations and an employee’s innovation behavior,which further deepens our understanding of the innovative behavior mechanism in micro-organization field.The findings of this study have important theoretical and practical implications on perceiving leadership and promoting innovation in an organization.