Abstract
As a part of job resources, work time control is essential for innovation. We examine how work time control impacts knowledge employees’ innovation in the workplace. A two-stage study was conducted to verify the mediating and moderating processes. In Study 1, adopting the job demands–resources model as a theoretical framework, we conducted a laboratory test to find the relation between work time control, job engagement, job burnout, and innovation, and verified the path between work time control and innovation. In Study 2, drawing on the job demands–resources model verified by Study 1 and self-regulation theory, it is proposed that during the psychological process in the workplace, job engagement plays a mediating role, and the vocational delay of gratification plays a moderating role between work time control and innovation. A total of 254 knowledge employees from diverse organizations participated in the survey study. After taking demographic variables, job demands, and neuroticism as control variables, the results showed that job engagement would mediate the relationship between work time control and innovation. A higher level of delay of gratification buffered the effect of a higher level of work time control on innovation. All these findings verified and expanded knowledge on work time control and innovation literature, showing that work time control is important for innovation. Based on Chinese cultural background, managers should offer employees the opportunity to conduct self-control training and encourage them with great freedom to foster employee innovation.
Highlights
In recent years, with the prevalence of overtime work such as “white + black,” “5 + 2,” or “996” in China, the debate over whether work time control matters for innovation has become much more severe and urgent
The group was highly correlated to job engagement (r = 0.27, p < 0.05) and innovation (r = 0.57, p < 0.01), but not correlated to gender (r = −0.13, p > 0.05) and job burnout (r = 0.1, p > 0.05)
In Study 2, Model 1 demonstrated that work time control had a highly significant and positive correlation with job engagement (b = 0.453, SE = 0.049, p < 0.01) and innovation (b = 0.337, SE = 0.052, p < 0.01)
Summary
With the prevalence of overtime work such as “white + black,” “5 + 2,” or “996” in China, the debate over whether work time control matters for innovation has become much more severe and urgent. Managers in Chinese enterprises are trying to increase employees’ opportunities to innovate by prolonging working hours. In this domain, some research has shown that employees who have sufficient freedom during their work process have a greater chance of coming up with unconventional ideas and combining novel work procedures (Volmer et al, 2012). We address the above issues by integrating the job demands–resources model and self-regulation theory in a novel way. The job demands– resources model provides a macrostructure to define how work time control may contribute to innovation (Bakker et al, 2014). According to the self-regulation theory, the process may be strengthened by the vocational delay of gratification. It has been found that when employees are aware of the expected profit from behavioral outcomes, they will tend to pursue long-term benefits, even though they are less motivated (Fishbach and Trope, 2005; Liu and Yu, 2017)
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