The Effects of Abusive Supervision and Motivational Preference on Employees’ Innovative Behavior

Jian Tian,Yan Peng,Xing Zhou

doi:10.3390/su12208510

Abstract

Individual innovative behavior has an important relationship with the sustainable development of an organization. Thus, mostly drawing on social cognitive theory, this study examined the relationship between abusive supervision and employees’ innovative behavior, focusing on the mediating role of creative self-efficacy and the moderating role of motivational preference. In an analysis of time-lagged data from three technological, innovation-based enterprises in Shenzhen, this study found that abusive supervision was negatively related to employees’ innovative behavior and that this relationship was mediated by creative self-efficacy. Moreover, motivational preference was found to moderate this relationship as well as that between abusive supervision and creative self-efficacy. Employees with higher levels of motivational preference (i.e., intrinsic motivational preference weighs more than extrinsic motivational preference) are more vulnerable to abusive supervision, causing lower creative self-efficacy performance and less innovative behavior. Alternately, employees with lower levels of motivational preference (i.e., extrinsic motivational preference weighs more than intrinsic motivational preference) are less vulnerable to abusive supervision, thus resulting in a weaker negative relationship between abusive supervision and their creative self-efficacy and innovative behavior.

Highlights

Innovative behavior has an important influence on the sustainable development of enterprises [1,2]
The confirmatory factor analysis results showed that the five-factor model offered an acceptable fit to the data (χ2 = 869.247, CFI = 0.947, TLI = 0.943, and RMSEA = 0.026)
The results showed that: (1) Abusive supervision was negatively related to creative self-efficacy (CSE) (β = −0.28, p < 0.01, Model 2); (2) CSE was positively related to employees’ innovative behavior (EIB) (β = 0.37, p < 0.01, Model 5), and (3) after adding CSE, compared to the negative effect of abusive supervision on EIB in Model 4 (β = −0.41, p < 0.01), the coefficient decreased (β = −0.33, p < 0.01, Model 6), while CSE continued to have a positive effect on EIB (β = 0.28, p < 0.01, Model 6)

Summary

Introduction

Innovative behavior (e.g., the development, adoption, and implementation of new ideas in the workplace) has an important influence on the sustainable development of enterprises [1,2]. Innovative behavior is a necessary factor within an enterprise if that enterprise wishes to establish a competitive advantage [7]. Such behaviors can help enterprises to survive and succeed in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex business environment [8]. What should be clarified is that, in comparison to creativity, employees’ innovative behavior (EIB) encompasses a wider range, varying from small behaviors, such as making an improvement in a work routine, to implementing a theory or working out a new product [4,9,10]. Creativity just focuses on generating new ideas [11,12]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion