Research On Relationship Between Knowledge Workers Motivation, Innovation Legitimacy And Innovation Performance

Most of the previous research about the impact factors of enterprise innovation were based on corporate governance level or the strategic management level to study the influences of enterprise executive’s characteristics on company innovation behavior and performance. Different from this study, after a longtime-reading and thinking of the existing literates,the author find that most of the previous studies were started from executive’s equity and incentive compensation, management power, entrepreneurship and social capital. However, innovation is a decision-making involved in many aspects both inside and outside the company; beside the strategic decisions of corporate executives, the internal implementation level-employees is equally important for the enterprise innovation performance. Especially under the condition of open economy and globalization background, enterprises are facing much more intense and complex competition than ever before, the present competitive modes and competitive contents are gradually transferring from the traditional market competition, product cost competition to management innovation and technology innovation level which characterized by talents as its core power. Knowledge workers with high creativity is the most active core resource for the enterprise innovation system and can bring the added value of intellectual capital for enterprises or organizations, Knowledge workers have become the most important innovation main body and the carrier of knowledge. The innovative attitude and innovation behavior of Knowledge workers can directly affect the enterprise innovation performance and competitive advantage. Therefore, knowledge workers have become important resource for the survival and sustainable development of the organizations. Innovation legitimacy refers to the legality level of enterprise innovation behavior and output in regulation legitimacy, normative legitimacy and cognition legitimacy, if the legitimacy of the innovation is higher, the enterprises are easier to get close to market resources channels and market demand channels, innovation behaviors are easier to realize the enterprise’s long-term and rapid development.Effective motivation of knowledge worker can directly affect their work attitude and innovation quality to produced direct influence on enterprise innovation legitimacy, in the present era of knowledge economy, although the general explicit contracts can improve the innovation motivation of knowledge workers in a certain extent, but due to characteristics of knowledge production and knowledge type staff themselves, the innovation activities are also become short-term, the reason lies not only in virtual, viscosity and other characteristics of knowledge itself, but also lies in the lack of innovative innovation power and behavior deviation of Knowledge workers, so strengthening of Knowledge workers’ incentive measures to enhance the innovation performance of the enterprises is of great significance.Based on institution theory, motivation theory and many other related theories, starting from the perspective of enterprise innovation legitimacy, based on reading and thinking of references to the relevant theoretical results at home and abroad, and the work of literature review and theoretical deduction, in this paper the author established the basic research framework of knowledge worker motivation, innovation legitimacy and innovation performance, and studied the relationship between the three variables, the studied contents were as following:Firstly, establishment of the knowledge worker incentive system based on the total reward model. In this paper, based on the total compensation model and field interview results, the paper divides the knowledge employee motivation into four dimensions: economic compensation incentive, welfare incentive, promotion incentive and environmental incentive. In the for dimensions,the economic incentive compensation mainly include the basic salary, variable pay, bonuses and other related income of knowledge workers; welfare incentive include paid vacation, insurance, training, pension plans of knowledge workers; promotion incentives include enterprise knowledge type staff promotion information, promotion channels etc.of knowledge workers; environmental incentive include working conditions, enterprise culture, interpersonal relationships and working characteristics etc.of knowledge workers.Secondly, the analysis of the connotation of innovation legitimacy and its evaluation dimension. Based on the study of existing organizational legitimacy studies, through theoretical deduction, combined with the characteristics of enterprise innovation behavior and innovation results, enterprise innovation legitimacy is divided into the three dimensions include regulation innovation legitimacy, innovative normative legitimacy and innovative cognitive legitimacy. The regulation innovation legitimacy refers to the degree enterprise innovation behavior coherent with the rules and regulations of the regulations and regulatory system; innovation normative legitimacy emphasize the degree that innovation activities coherent to culture, traditional social values and norms; innovation cognitive legitimacy mainly refers to the consistency of the enterprise innovation behavior and people grasp cognitive information.Thirdly, study of the relationship between knowledge worker motivation and enterprise innovation performance.through a large sample empirical analysis research on the relationship between the knowledge worker motivation and innovation performance the author found that (1) economic incentive have significant positive effect on innovation performance (r=0.207, P< 0.01); (2) the welfare incentive has a significant positive effect on innovation performance (r=0.386, P<0.01); (3) promotion incentive has a significant positive effect on innovation performance (r=0.306, P< 0.01); (4) environmental incentive has a significant positive effect on innovation performance (r= 0.401, P< 0.01); (5) positive role of different incentives for innovation performance are different, environment incentive has the strongest effect, welfare incentive follows, economic compensation incentive has the weakest effect.Fourthly, study of the relationship between knowledge worker motivation and innovation legitimacy. The empirical results show that:(1) economic compensation has significant positive effect on innovation regulation legitimacy, innovation normative legitimacy and innovation cognitive legitimacy, regression coefficients were 0.369 (P<0.01),0.353 (P<0.01),0.368 (P<0.01); (2) welfare incentive has significant positive effect on innovation regulation legitimacy, innovation normative legitimacy and innovation cognitive legitimacy,, the regression coefficients were 0.462 (P<0.01),0.530 (P<0.01),0.494 (P<0.01); (3) promotion incentive has significant positive effect on innovation regulation legitimacy, innovation normative legitimacy and innovation cognitive legitimacy, the regression coefficients were 0.393 (P<0.01),0.429 (P<0.01),0.506 (P<0.01); (4) environmental incentive has significant positive effect on innovation regulation legitimacy, innovation normative legitimacy and innovation cognitive legitimacy, regression coefficients were 0.527 (P< 0.01),0.556 (P< 0.01) and 0.564 (P< 0.01); (5) positive role of different dimensions of motivation on innovation legitimacy are of different degree, effect of environmental incentive is strongest, effect of the economic compensation incentive is the weakest.Fifthly, study of the relationship between innovation legitimacy and innovation performance. According to the empirical study this study found:(1) the regulation innovation legitimacy and innovative normative innovation and innovation cognitive legitimacy have significant positive effect on innovation performance, the regression coefficients were:0.380 (P<0.01), and 0.483 (P<0.01) and 0.504 (P<0.01)); (2) different dimension of innovation legitimacy produced different positive impact on innovation performance. The positive effect of the innovative cognitive legitimacy is strongest, innovation normative legitimacy follows and regulation innovation legitimacy is the weakest.Sixth, study of the mediating role of innovation legitimacy. This paper verified the partial intermediary role of innovation legitimacy in the relationship between the knowledge worker motivation and innovation performance, it means that positive effect of knowledge worker incentive on innovation performance partly realized by improvement of innovation legitimacy.The research significance and innovation points of this research mainly reflected in the following aspects:first, analyzing the connotation of knowledge worker motivation based on total reward model, in this paper the author divided the enterprise knowledge worker incentive mechanism into four dimensions which includes:economic compensation incentive, welfare incentive, promotion incentive and environmental incentive, further this study also enrich the incentive mechanism theory of knowledge workers in China, this kind of study also has a reference value for selection and implementation of incentive measures in the present practice of enterprise management; secondly, this study focusing on knowledge workers and take the enterprise knowledge workers’incentive situation as the antecedent variables, then makes evaluation of its association with the enterprise innovation performance, the research conclusions make enrichment and supplement for the enterprises to choose the multi-level incentive subjects in management practices and to implement diversified incentive means for the enterprise human resource management department; third, based on the research form the perspective of innovation legitimacy, correlation mechanism between knowledge worker motivation and innovation performance was tested through empirical research method, through the research of intermediary role of innovation legitimacy, this paper excavates new transmission mechanism between knowledge worker incentive and enterprise innovation performance, enrich the theoretical path between incentive mechanism on innovation performance, also provides the reference for objective evaluation of enterprise innovation decision and innovation behavior and provide a basis for exploring new path to improve the innovation performance.