A Social Resources Perspective of Employee Innovative Behavior and Outcomes: A Moderated Mediation Model

Abstract

Employee innovation is becoming increasingly important when organizations strive for sustainable competitive advantage. Different from previous research on employee innovation and relational/structural perspectives of social networks, the present study is the first attempt to empirically examine how social resources per se influence employee innovation. Drawing on social-resources theory, this study proposes that social resources for innovation boost employee innovation, which is strengthened by supervisor support. By conducting a field survey on 154 employees in a high-tech company and collecting the archival data of their innovative outputs, we found that employees who can access and mobilize more social resources demonstrate more innovative behavior and subsequently achieve better outputs, such as patents and invention disclosures. Supervisor support amplifies social resources’ effects on employee innovative behavior and innovative outcomes. This study contributes to the literature on social networks and employee innovation by introducing a new theoretical perspective. Practically, it also adds new insights to boost innovation performance from a social-resources approach.