Supervisor Feedback and Innovative Work Behavior: The Mediating Roles of Trust in Supervisor and Affective Commitment

HyeonUk Bak

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.559160

Abstract

This study aimed to explore how the mechanisms of supervisor feedback affect innovative work behavior (IWB) among local government employees and to examine the mediating roles of trust in supervisor and affective commitment, using organizational support theory (OST) and social exchange theory. The results from a cross-sectional study based on a sample of 1,699 local government employees from 65 local governments indicated that supervisor feedback had a direct effect on IWB. Trust in supervisor and affective commitment significantly mediated the relationship between supervisor feedback and IWB. The findings of this study contribute to an advanced understanding of the supervisor feedback-IWB relationship by testing the mediation model in the local government context.

Highlights

There has been a growing interest in innovative work behavior (IWB) among both scholars and practitioners (Bysted and Jespersen, 2014; Bysted and Hansen, 2015; Günzel-Jensen et al, 2018; Miao et al, 2018; Hansen and Pihl-Thingvad, 2019; Khan and Khan, 2019)
Drawing from organizational support theory (OST) and social exchange theory, this study proposed and tested a mediation model to remove the veil about a mechanism of supervisor feedback on IWB that includes two mediators, trust in supervisor and affective commitment, among Korean local government employees
Drawing from OST, this study demonstrated that supervisor feedback has a positive direct effect on IWB

Summary

Introduction

There has been a growing interest in innovative work behavior (IWB) among both scholars and practitioners (Bysted and Jespersen, 2014; Bysted and Hansen, 2015; Günzel-Jensen et al, 2018; Miao et al, 2018; Hansen and Pihl-Thingvad, 2019; Khan and Khan, 2019). IWB refers to employee’s behaviors to improve individual and/or organizational work outcomes by generating, promoting, implementing, and realizing new ideas and is regarded as a vital factor for organizational performance improvement and sustainable development (Scott and Bruce, 1994; Janssen, 2000; Shanker et al, 2017; Hansen and Pihl-Thingvad, 2019; Saether, 2019). Employees improve their individual performance through IWB (e.g., fixing errors in service delivery, learning from processes for identifying and correcting the errors, and generating creative ideas for work processes; Fernandez and Moldogaziev, 2013; Günzel-Jensen et al, 2018). Previous studies have indicated that employees who receive performance or developmental feedback from their supervisors are likely to display positive behavioral and attitudinal outcomes, such as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB; Peng and Chiu, 2010), organizational commitment (OC; Eisenberger and Stinglhamber, 2011), trust (Nyhan, 2000), job satisfaction (Jong, 2016), and performance

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