Study On The Relationship Of Person-Organization Fit, Psychological Empowerment And Employee's Innovative Behavior

The form of knowledge-based economy in which there are many innovations is the main form in the 21st century. Innovation is the primary source that a company obtains competitive advantages. Nowadays, the researchers pay more attention to study innovation. But they mainly study technological innovation and organizational innovation from relatively macro perspective. We need more studies about individual innovative behavior from the psychological and behavioral perspective. Amabile(1988)argues that an employee's creativity is the basis and the most important factor to the organizational innovation. Woodman,Sawyer and Griffin(1993)also argues that the creativity can be divided into three levels including individual, group and organization. Individual creativity is the final source of group creativity and organizational creativity. That is, the innovative capability of the company is ultimately determined by the employees'abilities worked in the company. So it is very important to study employee's innovative behavior and influencing mechanism.There are three perspectives in the study of innovative behavior. The first perspective is to consider individual factors which influence innovative behavior as intelligence, emotion, motivation, cognitive style and goal orientation(Amabile,2005; Barron and Harrington,1981). The second perspective is to consider environmental factors as job autonomy, challenge, team learning behavior, leader style and organizational innovative climate(Amabile,1996; Zhang and Bartol,2010). The third perspective is to consider the interaction of individual and environmental factors jointly to influence innovative behavior, like the interaction of emotion and leader style (Scott and Bruce,1994; Oldham and Cummings,1996; Zhou,1998; Gong,2009). Now researchers are inclined to the third perspective, that is, to consider the interaction of individual and environmental factors jointly to influence innovative behavior.Theoretically, the concept of person-organization fit embodies the thought of person and environment fit and can be viewed as an important way to understand and study organizational context and employee's work attitude and behavior(Kristof,1996). The study of person-organization fit and employee's innovative behavior are along two different ways and the relationship between two concepts is seldom studied(Livingstone,1997; Choi,2004; Sunjianmin and Wangzhen,2009; Dusheng and Wangdanni,2009). Although many researchers have found that supportive environment and challenging task all has the significant impact on individual creativity(Amabile,1996; Oldham and Cummings,1996), Choi(2004) finds that the environment has no significant impact on individual creativity with student samples from person and environment fit perspective. Some scholars have verified that person-organization fit has positive impact on organizational commitment and employee's satisfaction, others have verified that person-organization fit has positive impact on innovative behavior. But there are little research on studying the relationship between different forms of fit and employee's innovative behavior. No one studies the mechanism of person-organization fit on employee's innovative behavior from social cognitive perspective. It is necessary to further study the relationship between person-organization fit and employee's innovative behavior.In this study, we read a lot of relevant literatures from domestic and abroad. Based on Tolman's cognitive behaviorism, Bandura's interactional theory, Lewin's group dynamics theory and social exchange theory, we propose a theoretical model of the relationship among person-organization fit, psychological empowerment and employee's innovative behavior. Person-organization fit refers to three matches of individual and organization, that is supplementary fit, needs-supplies fit and demands-abilities fit(Kristof,1996).This concept reflects the match of a person and organization comprehensively because of including the concept of person-job fit. Psychological empowerment refers to four cognitions reflecting an individual's orientation to his or her work role: meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact(Thomas and Velthouse,1990). Employee's innovative behavior refers to produce novel and useful ideas and idea implementation (Woodman, 1993; Amabile,1996). How does person-organization fit influence employee's innovative behavior? What is the influencing mechanism? There are no research now and it belongs to theory vacuum. This study tries to answer these questions in depth.Moreover, when studying employee's innovative behavior, most scholars concern about scientists and R & D personnel as their objects. This paper argues that the samples were too narrow. Innovation can be divided into breakthrough innovation and incremental innovation. Incremental innovation is more suitable for the enterprise. Because every enterprise needs continuous improvement though there are no inventions and creations everyday. Every little break can be regarded as an innovation. According to creativity theory, everyone has creativity and creativity can be aroused under appropriate circumstances. Each employee can have different types of innovation in their own work range. So the studying objects in this paper not only include R & D personnel but also include managers, technicians, and front-line technical workers. Front-line technical workers refer to senior blue-collars engaged in high-technology works.Through 10 employees of depth interviews and collection of 553 valid questionnaires,we obtain a lot of empirical data. We use SPSS16.0 and AMOS16.0 to deal with the data. The following important conclusions are drawn when we control demographic variables as sex, age, education experience,work experience, and position.(1)Person-organization has a significant positive impact on employee's innovative behavior(β=0.543 , Sig.= 0.000). Supplementary fit has a significant positive impact on employee's innovative behavior(β=0.261,Sig.= 0.000),so does demands-abilities fit(β=0.285,Sig.= 0.000). Needs-supplies fit has no impact on employee's innovative behavior(β=0.067,Sig.=0.273).(2) Psychological empowerment plays an intermediate role between person-organization fit and employee's innovative behavior.(3) Person-organization fit has a significant positive impact on psychological empowerment(β=0.686,Sig.= 0.000). Supplementary fit has a significant positive impact on psychological empowerment(β=0.252,Sig.= 0.000). Needs-supplies fit has a significant positive impact on psychological empowerment(β=0.241,Sig.= 0.000). Demands-abilities fit has a significant positive impact on psychological empowerment(β=0.275,Sig.= 0.000).(4) Psychological empowerment has a significant positive impact on employee's innovative behavior(β=0.688,Sig.= 0.000). Meaning(β=0.282,Sig.= 0.000), self-determination(β=0.174,Sig.= 0.000), competence(β=0.300,Sig.= 0.000),and impact(β=0.156,Sig.= 0.000) all has a significant positive impact on employee's innovative behavior. (5)Coworker support can affect the relationship between psychological empowerment and employee's innovative behavior.The more feel of coworker support, the stronger impact of psychological empowerment on employee's innovative behavior.(6)Supervisor support has no effect on the relationship between person-organization fit and psychological empowerment.There are four contributions of this study:(1)Further verifying the relationship between three forms of person-organization fit and employee's innovative behaviorIt embodies new perspective to study innovative behavior from person- organization fit perspective—interactional impact of person and environment on innovative behavior.But conclusions are not unified. Choi(2004) suggested that it is necessary to further study the relationship between person-organization fit and employee's innovative behavior.In addition, some scholars'studies are based on the students sample and class context(Choi,2004;Dusheng and Wangdanni,2009),there is a gap between class and real company.So it is necessary to study the relationship between person-organization fit and employee's innovative behavior and influencing mechanism in company context.With employees in enterprises as samples,we verify the relationship between three forms of person-organization fit and employee's innovative behavior in organizational context.The study shows that supplementary fit and demands-abilities fit has significant positive impact on employee's innovative behavior. Needs-supplies fit has no impact on employee's innovative behavior(2)Showing the influencing mechanism of person-organization fit on employee's innovative behavior through psychological empowermentPerson-organization fit influencing employee's innovative behavior is a complex psychological process.We combine relevant theories and introduce psychological empowerment as a mediate variable and show the influencing mechanism of person-organization fit on employee's innovative behavior partially through psychological empowerment.This study fills in a gap among the relationship of person-organization fit, psychological empowerment, and employee's innovative behavior.The study of introducing psychological empowerment deepens our knowledge of person-organization fit influencing employee's innovative behavior. (3)Showing the moderator between the relationship of psychological empowerment and employee's innovative behaviorFrom social exchange theory and interpersonal support perspective, we consider supervisor support as a moderator between the relationship of person-organization fit and psychological empowerment and consider coworker support as a moderator between the relationship of psychological empowerment and employee's innovative behavior.Through empirical study, we identify that coworker support is a moderator to affect the relationship between psychological empowerment and employee's innovative behavior.(4)Showing the relationship between three forms of person-organization fit and psychological empowermentScholars in the past only studied the relationship between supplementary fit and psychological empowerment. This study involves the relationship between three forms of person-organization fit and psychological empowerment. The result shows that supplementary fit, demand-abilities fit and needs-supplies fit all has significant positive impact on psychological empowerment. The study fills in the gap of the relationship between demand-abilities fit and psychological empowerment and the relationship between needs-supplies fit and psychological empowerment.