Abstract
Innovation enables organizations to survive and maintain sustainability in today’s increasingly competitive business environment. Employee innovation is an issue that has received much attention from enterprises and academic circles and has never been out of date. Curiosity is the beginning of the desire for knowledge, has always been regarded as the source of instructions for innovation. However, the idea that curiosity promotes innovation is not supported by empirical research. Here, we broaden our understanding of curiosity in an organizational context through an empirical investigation how work curiosity influences innovation behavior. We also propose that the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the moderating role of job autonomy in the abovementioned relationships. Through two-stage paired tracking and multi-source questionnaire survey, using SPSS22.0 and Mplus7.0, and based on data collected from 247 participants in China, we tested our hypotheses concerning these relationships. The study has implications for enterprises to promote employee innovation, especially through “micro-innovation” to promote “big innovation”.
Highlights
For contemporary VUCA environments, the competition among industries is becoming increasingly fierce (Horstmeyer, 2020)
This study has contributed theoretically by taking a close look at the process of work curiosity influencing innovative behavior, it is one of the few empirical studies to examine the effect of work curiosity on innovative behavior so far
From the perspective of an employee’s characteristics, we developed how the innovative behavior of employees is affected by work curiosity and emphasized the significance of employees’ psychological quality based on the empirical evidence from China
Summary
For contemporary VUCA environments, the competition among industries is becoming increasingly fierce (Horstmeyer, 2020). Under the guidance of China’s “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” policy, employee innovation behavior is important for the effectiveness and survival of an organization. It can guide the sustainable development of an organization, and serve as the driving force of China’s economic supply-side reform. Innovation in the current Internet context is facing new challenges. In the Internet era with the expansion of information, it is necessary to cultivate and maintain employees’ curiosity, that is, the continuous demand for learning, exploration and discovery, keep employees thinking actively and thinking deeply is an important good way to deal with the challenges faced by employee innovation in the context of the Internet
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
