| Employees' innovative behavior is the cornerstone of organizational innovation and the key factor to improve organizational innovative performance and competitiveness.Innovation is a process involving both the generation and implementation of ideas(Scott and Bruce,1994).Including domain-relevant skills,creativity-relevant skills,and task motivation as a set of necessary and sufficient components of creativity,the framework putout by Amabile(1983)describes the way in which cognitive abilities,personality characteristics,and social factors might contribute to different stages of the creative process.The current researches have explored the influence of individual characteristics,leadership style,colleagues,organizational climate on individual and team innovative behavior,and have produced a series of valuable results(Anderson et al.,2014).But what should leaders do in the management practice to effectively stimulate the innovation enthusiasm of employee,and provide support that employees' creative process engagement needs still a realistic problem.As one of the most important factors that affect employees' involvement in innovation,intrinsic motivation and other individual psychological factors have not draw scholars' attention,and empirical studies are scarce.A large number of studies clarify the influence of different leadership style on employees innovative behavior,most of which focuses on the mechanism of transformational leadership and paternalistic leadership on innovative behavior.In recent years,some scholars have found that leadership empowerment behavior positively affected employees9 creativity(Zhang and Bartol,2010a),but how leadership empowerment behavior affect employees' innovation behavior has been paid less attention.In addition,the majority of researchers maiuly focus on the consequences of leadership empowerment behavior,whereas the research probing into its antecedents proves rare(Lee et al.,2018).In recent years,the application of social cognitive theory to the research field of followership expedites the implicit followership theories(Sy,2010),which makes it possible to uncover the antecedents of employee innovative behavior and leadership empowerment behavior.In the past,leadership has often been studied from the leader perspective,'whereas followers have rarely been considered.Follower-centered leadership research demonstrated that the follower perspective adds significantly to our understanding of leadership and the formation of leadership.One stream of follower-centered leadership research is the research of implicit followership theories(IFTs).In short,IFTs represent the respective views of followers.People compare a potential follower to their implicit benchmarks and act in accordance with the outcome of these comparison(Sy,2010;Junker&Dick,2014).The integral elements of the implicit followership theory are followership prototypes,which are individual's cognitive schema of follower's traits and behaviors.Sy(2010)classified followership prototypes into the positive followership prototype(PFP)and the negative followership prototype(NFP),and PFP is gradually becoming a main research focus.As the IFTS has been proposed in recent years,still the total number of studies examining IFTs in organizational settings is relatively small.Such as,almost all existing research is conducted from a leadership perspective to study how leaders' positive followership prototype works,less attention is paid to subordinates' positive followership prototype.And there is only little joint research on leaders' positive followership prototype and employees' positive followership prototype.Foti et.al.(2017)argue that future research should examine the extent to which congruence on implicit theories of leader vs.employee PFP differentially predicts relevant work outcomes(e.g.organizational citizenship behaviors,employee innovative behavior).Based on the realistic background and theoretical gap above,this study explores the how employees' PFP affect their innovative behavior and the influence of leaders'PFP on their empowerment behavior from the perspective of both leaders and employees.And also examines the congruence between leader PFP and follower PFP may elicit leaders,empowerment behavior and employees' innovative behavior.The framework of the study is "positive followership prototype(leader,employee,prototype fit)?leader trust(employee creative role identity)?leadership empowerment behavior(employee creative process engagement)? employee innovative behavior".The study consists of three sub-studies,First,based on the role identity theory,in building a model linking employees' PFP and innovative behavior,we further drew on the creative and innovation literature to posit a chain-mediating mechanisms with high potential to help explain linkages between employees' PFP and innovative behavior:creative role identity and creative process engagement.Secondly,based on the trust model,this study explores the mechanism of leaders' PFP in their trust and empowerment behavior.To examine the influence and difference of superior-subordinate prototype matching on employee and leadership behavior.Thirdly,we explore the effect of the congruence between leaders' PFP and employees'PFP on leadership empowerment behavior and employees' innovative behavior.The research was carried out through Internet(Wechat Platform)and on-the-spot(12 enterprises),we got 422 pairs of leader-employee matching data,then use SPSS and MPLUS to test the theory model.The results show that employees' PFP can positively affected their innovative behavior,creative role identity and creative process engagement play a chain mediating effect between them.The mediating role of creative role identity,in the relationship between employees' PFP and innovative behavior is moderated by leadership innovative behavior.And then,the positive relationship between leaders' PFP and the employees' positive followership trait is more significant when the employees' following trait fit leaders' internal cognitive Schema.And leaders9 cognition-based trust and affect-based trust play a mediating role in this process,and the mediating effect of affect-based trust is greater than that cognition-based trust.Finally,Leader-follower congruence in followership prototype is positively related to leadership empowerment behavior and employees' innovative behavior,and in that case,both leadership empowerment behavior and employees'innovative behavior are higher when employees and leaders are aligned at a high level of followership prototype than when they are at a low level.In the case of incongruence,employee innovative behavior is higher when employees 'followership prototype is higher than leaders' as compared to "leader high-employee low".And“leader high-employee low”has a more significant positive effect on leadership empowerment behavior than "leader low-employee high".Through the process of generating block variables,we found that leadership empowerment behavior plays a part of mediating role in the relationship between leader?employee prototype fit and employees' innovative behavior.This study examines the framework of Ppositive followership prototype(leader,employee,prototype fit)?leader trust(employee creative role identity)?leadership empowerment behavior(employee creative process engagement)? employees'inovative behavior",and identifies the mechanisms of the relationship between employees' PFP and innovative behavior,and between leaders' PFP and their empowerment behavior,and verifies the influence of leader-employee prototype fit on employees,innovative behavior.This study makes up for the deficiency of the research on the mechanism of PFP on employees5 innovative behavior and leadership empowerment behavior,and creatively explores the influence of PFP fit on employees,innovative behavior from the perspective of both leaders and employee,as well as the mediating role of leadership empowerment behavior,which not only enriches the research results of implicit followership theories,but also expands the antecedent variables of employees*innovative behavior and leadership empowerment behavior.The conclusion of this study has implications for employees,leadership and organization in management practice. |
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