Innovative employee behaviour: Evidence from domestic and foreign-owned companies operating in Russia

Abstract

This article analyses individual innovative behaviour of employees in domestic and foreignowned companies operating in Russia. The authors focus on personal and organisational factors affecting the three stages of innovative processes at the micro-level: generating, proposing and implementing new ideas. Empirical analysis is based on the survey of 623 white-collar employees and managers in 17 private-owned organisations in Russia. In both domestic- and foreign-owned companies skilled workers and those having higher status in organisations — men; supervisors; having two or more higher education degrees; assessing their professional competencies as high — are characterized by higher innovative activity at the fist and second stage. At the third stage of the innovative process, employees of foreign-owned companies tend to report higher effectiveness of their innovative suggestions. The authors conclude that the organisational environment of foreign-owned companies is generally more conducive to innovative activities compared to Russian domestic companies. Better innovative performance of foreign-owned companies can be explained by their managerial incentives for employees’ innovative behaviour. In particular, direct incentives of individual innovative activity such as financial rewards or career promotions are more common in foreign-owned companies. Managers of these companies are less authoritarian and tend to use participative techniques of decision making. Employees of foreign-owned companies are more focused in their innovative activities and concentrated on a narrower range of issues than that of domestic Russian organisations. The authors underline the importance of fostering an innovative-friendly organisational environment that would provide formal and informal, tangible and intangible rewards for employee innovative behaviour. These rewards should create a synergy among personal and organisational antecedents of employee innovative activities. Selection and hiring of intrinsically motivated personnel, creation of an organisational climate that is favorable for the free flow of ideas and access to information, as well as direct incentives for innovative activities, are seen as crucially important.