The role of employee participation in generating and commercialising innovations: insights from Chinese high-tech firms

Abstract

To date, employee participation finds very little recognition in China in research as well as in management practice. It seems to fundamentally contradict traditional values in Chinese culture. The effect of employee participation on innovation is completely unknown, not only for China, but also for many other emerging economies. In contrast, employee participation finds a lot of recognition in the western world for quite some while. Research suggests that employee participation is particularly relevant for innovations in skilled labour contexts, which are becoming increasingly important also for China. Based on a survey of 620 medium-sized and large companies we are investigating the effect of employee participation on innovation generation and commercialisation in China. In the formulation of our hypotheses we take the moderating effects of incentives into account. The contribution of this article is to give evidence on the explanation power of the western concept of employee participation outside the western world. This allows for a better understanding of the robustness of the concept towards cultural context factors.