An Empirical Study On The Relationship Between The Innovative Consciousness And Innovative Behavior Of Mid-to-top-level Managers

Peter Drucker once said that in a rapidly changing era,change is the only constant truth!National economic and social development "11th Five-Year Plan" clearly outlines that in order to comprehensively implement the scientific concept of development, we must improve the capability of independent innovation, and at the same time we must enhance the ability of innovation in science and technology development as a strategic basis and adjust the industrial structure, transform the main mode of economic growth, greatly improve the ability of original innovation, integrated innovation and the introduction of a new digestion and absorption capacity. Central Party and State Council on independent innovation exposition and plans has important practical significance to continue to enhance their ability of independent innovation. January 9, 2006, President Hu Jintao at the National Conference on Science and Technology announced the 15th science and technology of China's future development goals: by 2020 we will have completed an innovation-oriented country so that the technology developed into a powerful economic and social development support.Enterprise innovation is essential to the state's innovation capability enhancement,. Looking back at history, accompanied by a globalization of the world economy,the international market integration,regional economic blocs,the world's economic system reform and economic fields in the new development model for enterprise proposed a series of new issues and new challenges, thus enterprise reform and innovation across two centuries become the trend and the trend will continue, innovation is becoming the survival and development cornerstone for enterprises.In the wave of corporate innovation, enterprise managers have been forced to face all kinds of challenges. As dominant groups of enterprise resources, enterprise managers are responsible for planning, organizing, coordinating, targeting, commanding and controlling,etc. Their innovative knowledge, attitude and concrete action do not only have something to do with whether enterprises can produce innovative productions, more importantly, they are playing a decisive role in creating an innovation environment for enterprise, and guide enterprise resource to innovation.Since the enterprise managers of innovation is so important, then what innovations do China's enterprise managers have in the day-to-day operational and management activities? What innovative features do Enterprise managers show? In addition, the action is built on the views and attitudes, like "views or attitudes have a direct impact on the behavior" (Ajzen, 1988; Chambers, 1999), then do the enterprise managers have a consciousness of innovation? Whether they demonstrate a strong desire of innovation? How on earth do they interpret enterprise innovation? Whether attitudes and perceptions have an impact on innovation under the condition that enterprise managers are innovative can be confirmed?Although academic community and relevant government departments has been attaching great importance to these issues, but we failed to give satisfactory answers based on current studies. This thesis systematically studied on the aspects of entrepreneurs'innovation conciousness, structure of innovation, characteristics of innovation, relations between them through ways of analysis of the literature, questionnaires and related research etc.This paper includes the following four areas of study: firstly, analysis of previous literature about innovative consciousness, innovative behaviors and other related researches; secondly, empirical researches on innovative consciousness of senior management; thirdly, empirical researches on innovative behaviors of senior management; lastly, studies on relations between innovative consciousness and innovative behaviors of senior management.In this paper we have reached the following main conclusions:(1) The innovative consciousness of mid-to-top-level managers consists of innovation need and motivation, innovation means consciousness, and innovation awareness of the value; the innovative behaviors of mid-to-top-level managers are formed of strategic innovation, production and management innovation, management system innovation, enterprise culture innovation, collection of innovation information, seek support for innovation and innovative operation. The questionnaires on " innovative consciousness of enterprise mid-to-top management " and " innovative behaviors of enterprise mid-to-top management " respectively have been tested to be reliable and valid.(2) Generally speaking, mid-to-top management in enterprises have relatively weak consciousness of innovation and the consciousness of innovation is out of balance in every aspects, of which, innovative awareness of the value is the main content. In terms of nature of enterprises, mid-to-top management in private enterprises has more innovation need and motivation consciousness than those in a state-owned enterprise, sino-foreign joint ventures, enterprises with sino-foreign cooperation, and wholly foreign-owned enterprises. In addition, 41 to 50-year-old mid-to-top managers enjoy a higher level of awareness of enterprises than those who are under the age of 40 .(3) In a whole, mid-to-top management in enterprises did a mediocre job on innovation. As regards to different nature of enterprises, mid-to-top managemers in private enterprises have more than innovation management than those who come from state-owned enterprises, especially in strategic innovation, production and operation innovation and management system innovation. Moreover, management system innovation of mid-to-top managemers from private enterprises is superior to sino-foreign joint ventures, enterprises with sino-foreign cooperation, and wholly foreign-owned enterprises; innovations of mid-to-top management in high-tech enterprises are more than those in non-high-tech enterprises, in particular in the collection of innovation information and innovation operation; additionally, the smaller a enterprise is, the more mid-to- top management innovative behaviors.(4) There was a conspicious correlation between innovative consciousness and behavior of mid-to-top-level managers, different levels of innovative consciousness of mid-to-top-level managers have obviously different innovative behavior. Mid-to-top managers'behaviors of strategic innovation and collection of innovation information are predictable from their innovation need and motivation awareness; at the same time, their scores of innovative consciousness make scores of, innovation behaviours, production and management innovation, management system innovation, corporate culture innovation, seek support for innovation and innovation operations foreseeable in a future.