Organizational Innovation Climate and Creative Outcomes: Exploring the Moderating Effect of Time Pressure

Promoting or Prohibiting? Investigating How Time Pressure Influences Innovative Behavior under Stress-Mindset Conditions

The existing empirical evidence on the relationship between time pressure and innovative behavior is paradoxical. An intriguing yet unresolved question is "When does time pressure promote or prohibit innovative behavior, and how?" We theorize that the paradoxical effect of time pressure on innovative behavior can be elucidated by the moderating role of stress mindset, and we also explore the mediating role of thriving at work. Our research involved a field study of 390 research and development personnel from eight enterprises and research institutes in China to test our proposed model. Results indicated that the stress-is-debilitating mindset negatively moderated the association between time pressure and thriving at work, while the stress-is-enhancing mindset positively moderated the link between time pressure and thriving at work. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated that the stress-is-debilitating mindset negatively moderated the indirect impact of time pressure on employees' innovative behavior through thriving at work, while the stress-is-enhancing mindset positively moderated the indirect effect of time pressure on employees' innovative behavior through thriving at work. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed.

When procrastination pays off: Role of knowledge sharing ability, autonomous motivation, and task involvement for employee creativity

The prime objective of this research was to investigate procrastination as a prospectively constructive element of the creative process among employees working at different hierarchical levels in a Chinese organization. Building on self-determination theory, this research postulates a connection between procrastination and creativity through the incubation of knowledge absorption, autonomous motivation and task engagement as boundary conditions. Data was collected from 213 individuals from the workforce and their immediate managers belonging to a Chinese furniture company; then analyzed with Mplus for simple regression analysis, mediated moderated analyses, and coefficient estimates of all the study variables. The outcomes of this investigation showed an inverse relationship between procrastination with creativity, while creativity being strongest in the medium levels of procrastination; however, when autonomous motivation and/or task engagement are strong, procrastination depicts an inverted-U-shaped association; however, in scenarios where both autonomous motivation and the task engagement are low, procrastination has a negative linear relationship. With the results of this research, we have shown that moderate procrastination has a causal effect on the generation of creative ideas. This research demonstrated that as long as employees had strong autonomous drive or high task engagement, their supervisors awarded them better ratings when they procrastinated moderately on their assignments. Limitations and future research directions were also discussed.

The nonlinear effect of time pressure on innovation performance: New insights from a meta-analysis and an empirical study

As competition grows, when employees are required to accelerate innovation, they also face increasing time pressure. In order to shed light on how time pressure affects employees' innovation performance, two studies were conducted to examine the effect of time pressure on innovation performance. In Study 1, based on 50 effect sizes from 50 independent samples (N = 15,751) in 40 articles, a meta-analysis was conducted to examine the J-shaped effect of time pressure on innovation performance. In Study 2, based on a two-wave survey of 645 employees, the mechanism underlying the J-shaped effect of time pressure on innovation performance was explored. Results from Study 1 revealed that time pressure had a J-shaped effect on innovation performance, such that high levels of time pressure had a more positive effect on innovation performance. Results from Study 2 showed that learning behavior significantly mediated the J-shaped effect of time pressure on innovation performance, and that supervisor developmental feedback moderated the intermediary process. These results deepen the understanding of the relationship between time pressure and innovation performance, and provide practical advice on how to manage innovation performance under time pressure.

The moderating effect of employee growth climate on the relationship between work engagement and job outcomes among plantation workers in North Sumatra, Indonesia

The current study investigates the moderating effect of employee growth climate on the relationship between work engagement and job outcomes among plantation workers in North Sumatra, Indonesia. Three individual-level job outcomes are investigated, namely, intra-role behavior, employee learning, and innovative work behavior. Six hundred and seven Indonesian plantation workers from one of the biggest palm oil plantations in Indonesia participated. Work engagement and employee growth climate were positively related to the three types of job outcomes, as expected. Furthermore, the relationship between work engagement-intra-role behavior and work engagement-innovative work behavior was moderated by employee growth climate. However, no moderating effect of employee growth climate was observed for the relationship between work engagement-employee learning. Thus, organizations may create programs to foster employee growth climate and aware of their employees' learning behaviors.

New venture top management team's shared leadership and its indirect effect on strategic performance: findings from SEM and fsQCA

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to empirically explore the relationship between a new venture top management team's (NVTMT’s) shared leadership and strategic performance in opportunity recognition and entrepreneurial bricolage by drawing on the upper echelons theory.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected from 344 new manufacturing ventures located in Eastern China. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling (SEM) through the AMOS 23.0 software package. The confluence of the contextual factors of the new venture is examined by a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

Findings

The results indicate that NVTMT shared leadership has an indirect and positive effect on strategic performance through opportunity recognition, especially in a highly uncertain environment, while the mediating effect of entrepreneurial bricolage is not significant. Furthermore, although the SEM results show that the impact of NVTMT shared leadership on entrepreneurial bricolage is negative, the fsQCA shows that NVTMT shared leadership can significantly and positively affect entrepreneurial bricolage in an environment with high uncertainty, ultimately enhancing strategic performance.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the shared leadership literature by proposing a model on how shared leadership shapes the strategic performance of new ventures via opportunity recognition and entrepreneurial bricolage. The findings not only enrich relevant research on the upper echelons theory, but also help in understanding the patterns of contextual conditions that facilitate the value-adding properties of NVTMT shared leadership.

Rewards and employee creativity among rural healthcare employees: the mediating role of organizational support for innovation and the moderating impact of supervisory support

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the mediating effect of organizational support for innovation and moderating impact of supervisory support on how rewards shape employee creativity among rural healthcare employees, a group with few resources and considerable expectations.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a regression-based moderated path analysis, the authors tested the hypotheses with healthcare employee survey data from a large Southern rural hospital in the USA.

Findings

The empirical results suggest organizational support for innovation mediates the influence of rewards on employee creativity. In addition, the indirect effect of rewards on employee creativity via organizational support for innovation is moderated by supervisory support, such that the indirect effect is more pronounced at high levels of supervisory support than at low levels of supervisory support.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the organizational support and creativity literature by exploring the indirect relations of rewards on employee creativity through organizational support for innovation, and the moderating role of supervisory support in such relations.

Measuring Green Creativity for Employees in Green Enterprises: Scale Development and Validation

Although employee green creativity is recognized as the key to the innovation in green enterprises, few studies explores the measurement of green creativity for employees. To address the gap, the present study identifies the major dimensions of employee green creativity and develops a comprehensive, reliable, and valid measurement instrument. According to the 4P’s model of creativity, four core dimensions of employee green creativity are identified, namely, green creative motivation, thinking, behavior, and outcome. Strictly adhering to the process of scale development, employee green creativity scale (EGCS) is constructed and validated. We first develop the items of employee green creativity based on literature review and expertise from academics and practitioners. Next, we examine the validation of EGCS through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis using a sample from three large-scale green enterprises (N = 460). Further, we also check the nomological validity of EGCS by testing the effects of determinants (e.g., green transformational leadership, shared vision, and green self-efficacy) on employee green creativity using a new sample from another two green enterprises (N = 169). Results reveal that EGCS is a reliable and valid instrument for capturing employee green creativity in multiple contexts. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Does an Innovative Climate Help to Sustain Competitiveness? The Moderating Effect of Government Support and Market Competition

Innovation has become a key source of competitive advantage that supports companies in achieving sustainable development. Organizational innovations usually start from employees’ innovative ideas, irrespective of the company’s size. If there were no specific rules to restrain employees from generating novel ideas, innovation could happen anywhere in an organization. The quest for innovation calls for a broad range of management strategies that are far beyond the research and development (R&D) investment. How can managers integrate intra-organizational management and external factors to incentivize people for innovations? Drawing on the interactional theory of organizational innovation, this study adopted a systematic perspective and tested the effect of the innovative climate on sales and manufacturing department innovation while examining the moderating effects of government support and market competition. Our findings from a survey of 482 companies showed that: (1) an innovative climate has a positive effect on both sales and manufacturing department innovation, (2) government support strengthens the positive effect of an innovative climate on department innovations, and (3) market competition enhances the positive moderating effect of government support on the relationship between an innovative climate and department innovation, such that the innovative climate exerts a stronger influence on department employee-driven innovation when government support and market competition are both high. Our study provides companies with an effective and low-cost approach to enhance competitiveness. We discuss the theoretical contributions and practical implementations of this study.

The effects of entrepreneurs’ moral awareness and ethical behavior on product innovation of new ventures

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to apply the social cognitive theory and social learning theory to examine the different mechanisms through which entrepreneurs’ moral awareness and ethical behavior affect the product innovation of new ventures.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors collected survey data from 150 founders and 389 founding team members of new ventures in China in 2015. The final sample contained 113 questionnaires from entrepreneurs and 246 questionnaires from their founding team members. Regression analyses were used to test direct effects, and Preacher and Hayes’ (2004) formal mediation test approach with bootstrapping method was used to evaluate the mediation effects.

Findings

The findings indicate that the ethical levels of entrepreneurs can affect the product innovation of a new venture through two paths: entrepreneurs with low levels of moral awareness tend to be more individually creative, which facilitates product innovation, and entrepreneurs with high levels of ethical behavior can make founding teams more creative, which also promotes product innovation.

Practical implications

The findings of this study suggest that entrepreneurs are not negatively affected by their low moral awareness as long as they exhibit high ethical behavior with founding team members. But such low moral awareness has to be genuine. The best way to promote product innovation in the long run is to create an organizational culture of ethical behavior rather than to ignore moral issues in decision-making.

Originality/value

This study challenges the assumption that moral awareness and ethical behavior are always consistent. It takes an initial step to resolve the contradiction in the current literature regarding the relationship between the ethical levels of entrepreneurs and product innovation in the context of founders and founding teams in new ventures.

Emotional exhaustion and innovation in the workplace-a longitudinal study

Emotional exhaustion and innovation at work are two major topics of interest to organization researchers, employees and employers. However, working conditions that foster innovation may also heighten employees' emotional exhaustion. By conducting a two-wave, longitudinal online study among the German working population (N=320), we analyzed the longitudinal impact of qualitative overload, unreasonable tasks, social support from a supervisor, and task variety on emotional exhaustion and innovation based on the categorization approach from the job demands-resources model research. Longitudinal structural equation modeling revealed that unreasonable tasks predicted emotional exhaustion (γ=0.111, p<0.01) and that task variety predicted individual innovation (γ=0.126, p<0.01) over time. Social support from a supervisor and qualitative overload, however, did not have any longitudinal influence on either emotional exhaustion or individual innovation. Rather unexpectedly, and in contrast to our hypotheses, no diverging effects from working conditions on emotional exhaustion or innovation could be found. The results demonstrate that the presence of unreasonable tasks impairs employees' psychological well-being and that a high task variety at work leads to innovation. Implications for practice and future studies are discussed.

Engaging in Creativity Broadens Attentional Scope

Previous studies have shown that creativity is enhanced by a broad attentional scope, defined as an ability to utilize peripheral stimuli and process information globally. We propose that the reverse relationship also holds, and that breadth of attention also is a consequence of engaging in a creative activity. In Study 1, participants showed increased breadth of attention in a visual scanning task after performing a divergent thinking task as opposed to an analytic thinking task. In Study 2, participants recognized peripheral stimuli displayed during the task better after performing a divergent thinking task as compared to an analytic task, whereas recognition performance of participants performing a task that involves a mix of divergent and analytic thinking (the Remote Associates Test) fell in between. Additionally, in Study 2 (but not in Study 1), breadth of attention was positively correlated with performance in a divergent thinking task, but not with performance in an analytic thinking task. Our findings suggest that the adjustment of the cognitive system to task demands manifests at a very basic, perceptual level, through changes in the breadth of visual attention. This paper contributes a new, motivational perspective on attentional breadth and discusses it as a result of adjusting cognitive processing to the task requirements, which contributes to effective self-regulation.