Abstract
We aim to examine the negative (relationship conflict) and positive (in-role job performance) outcomes of employees’ innovative behavior and explore the moderation effect of employees’ goal content and supervisors’ achievement goal orientation in these relationships. Data from 218 employees and their immediate supervisors were collected in companies in China and results show that employees’ innovative behaviors are positively related to their relationship conflict and in-role job performance, and employees’ extrinsic goals and supervisors’ performance goal moderate these relationships. Specifically, employees’ innovative behaviors were significantly and positively related to relationship conflict when either employees have high extrinsic goals or supervisor have high performance goals or both; and when supervisor have low level of performance goals, employees’ innovative behaviors were significantly and positively related to their in-role job performance. We contribute in showing when there are positive and negative outcomes of employees’ innovative behaviors and document the effect of moderating factors that may strengthen these benefits and lower the conflicts.
Highlights
Employees’ innovative behaviors are defined as the generation, promotion, and realization of new ideas in products and processes, which is different from the concept of creativity which only focuses on the generation of new and useful ideas (Janssen et al, 2004; Shin et al, 2017)
Based on the previous reviews, co-workers are more likely to resist to their colleagues’ innovative behaviors and lead to more relationship conflicts with them; we propose that these relationship conflicts will be stronger when subordinates’ innovative behaviors even cannot get the support from their supervisors
The following hypothesis is proposed: Hypothesis 5: Supervisors’ performance goal moderates the relationship between employees’ innovative behaviors and relationship conflicts, such that this relationship will be more positive when leader have high level of performance goal orientation. Since both supervisors’ performance goal and employees extrinsic relative to intrinsic goal pursuits (E/I) goal could positively moderate the relationship between employees’ innovative behaviors and their relationship conflicts, we propose a three-way interaction effect: Hypothesis 6: The relationship between employees’ innovative behaviors and relationship conflicts will be more positive when both the supervisors have high level of performance goal and employees have high level of extrinsic goal orientation
Summary
Employees’ innovative behaviors are defined as the generation, promotion, and realization of new ideas in products and processes, which is different from the concept of creativity which only focuses on the generation of new and useful ideas (Janssen et al, 2004; Shin et al, 2017). The general presumption is that employees’ innovative behaviors are always beneficial in order to do things better and are considered as an important source of an organization’s competitive advantage (e.g., Anderson et al, 2014; Shin et al, 2017) This is why most studies have focused on identifying factors that promote innovative behaviors (e.g., Zhou and Shalley, 2003; Wu et al, 2014; Wang et al, 2015), and some other studies have begun exploring the effects of innovation as a valuable independent variable (e.g., Janssen, 2003; Harrison and Wagner, 2016). Based on Janssen et al (2004) model, the first aim of the current study is to explore the effect of innovative behaviors on employees’ relationship conflict, which could have influential effect on employees themselves and on their in-role performance as evaluated by their supervisors This is important for the organizations in order to know how to efficiently manage employees’ innovative behaviors
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