The Profits And Costs of Employees Innovative Behavior: It Is Also the Matter of the Moderators

Abstract

We examined the negative (relationship conflict) and positive (in-role job performance) outcomes of employees’ innovative behavior, and explored the moderation effect of employees’ goal content and supervisor achievement goal orientation in these relationship. The results of a survey among 218 leader- follower dyads show that employees’ innovative behaviors are positively related to their relationship conflict and in-role job performance, and employees’ extrinsic goals and supervisor 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 discuss the theoretical and practical implication of this research.