| We often find that a few people are keen on the challenging task, so they are likely to produce a number of inventions. However, other people are fond of conforming to convention and keeping to the prescribed ways to complete the work merely. Why do these people have different job interests and get different job result? Because people's goal orientation are not the same, people's behavior and outcomes are neither same. Specially, people with different goal orientation have different attitude to innovation. In other words, people's goal orientation has an important effect on implementation of innovative performance.Innovation performance is generated in the individual level, which is novel, feasible and benefit to organization's products, processes, methods and ideas (HanYi, 2007). Goal orientation is refer to the goal that an individual runs after in a job. Scholars have found that goal orientation is a relatively stable personal characteristic, which determines whether employees are willing to continue to learn, and have the courage to challenge and innovate. Therefore, people with different goal orientation have different innovation performance.At present, many scholars have noted that the relationship between employee's goal orientation and innovation performance. Specially, some scholars have researched empirically the relationship between employee's goal orientation and innovation performance (Janssen & Van Yperen, 2004; Lulin&Chang Heshan, 2007). The results show that the goal orientation of employee's affects implementation of innovation performance. However, most of the scholars studied that goal orientation had a direct influence on innovation performance, who did not consider that employee's organizational trust is most likely to moderate the relationship between goal orientation and innovation performance.This study is based on literature review and analysis with regard to innovation performance, goal orientation and organizational trust. Goal orientation is classified as learning goal orientation and performance goal orientation. The following six hypotheses are proposed: Employee's learning goal orientation has a significant positive influence on innovation performance; Employee's performance goal orientation has a significant negative influence on innovation performance; Employee's organizational trust is most likely to moderate the relationship between learning goal orientation and innovation performance; Relative to employees with lower levels of organizational trust, employee with higher levels of organizational trust whose learning goal orientation has a greater positive impact on innovation performance; Employee's organizational trust is most likely to moderate the relationship between performance goal orientation and innovation performance; Relative to employees with higher levels of organizational trust, employee with lower levels of organizational trust whose performance goal orientation has a greater negative impact on innovation performance.To test the six hypotheses, we select employees of FAW Group Corporation as our research object in this article. We get 106 samples through convenience samples. The test of reliability and validity for all scales that we used, show that all scales have certain reliability and validity. The SPSS for Windows16.0 software was used for regression analysis. The main conclusions of this study include:First, Employee's learning goal orientation would promote and improve implementation of innovative performance.This study proves that employee's learning goal orientation has a significant positive influence on innovation performance. Also the standardized coefficient is 0.663, namely employee's learning goal orientation would promote and improve implementation of innovative performance. This conclusion is the same to these scholars'research conclusions, such as Janssen & Van Yperen(2004), Lulin&Chang Heshan(2007).They argue that employees with learning goal orientation are willing to engage in complex and challenging work, and make every effort to resolve difficulties encountered in the process of work and innovation. In above, they enjoy the sense of achievement that the work itself brings. Therefore, They are willing to try and innovate continuously, which contributes to the implementation of innovation performance. In a word, employee's learning goal orientation has a significant positive influence on innovation performance.Second, Employee's organizational trust moderates the relationship between learning goal orientation and innovation performance.This study proves that Employee's organizational trust moderates the relationship between learning goal orientation and innovation performance(p<0.01). Relative to employees with lower levels of organizational trust, employees with higher levels of organizational trust whose learning goal orientation has a greater positive impact on innovation performance. This demonstrates that organizational trust is an important organizational context factor. It can enhance the positive influence which learning goal orientation has on innovation performance. In terms of employees with learning goal orientation, who are engaged in a variety of challenging and innovative work often accompanied by frustration, failure and a variety of risks. The high level of organizational trust undoubtedly enhance employees'the psychological sense of security(Edmondson,1999)and willingness to bear risk, which inspire employee's learning and creation enthusiasm, and improve implementation of innovative performance.However, this hypothesis"employee's performance goal orientation has a significant negative influence on innovation performance"has not been verified. Goal orientation in itself has a complex structure. Goal orientation is classified as learning goal orientation and performance goal orientation in the academic field at present. Nevertheless, as an achievement orientation, a person may only choose a goal ( learning goal or performance goal is the dominant), or choose two goals at the same time, or have no interest in these two goals(Button&Mathieu,1996). Therefore, we do not rule out that the individual in sample do not tend to the performance goal orientation, which result in conclusions and hypothesis does not match in this study. Finally, some suggestions for future research are proposed in this article.Firstly, enlarge investigation scope and increase sample size. Considering industry background, ownership, nature of employees, employee gender, work experience, income and other factors, future researchers would select sample from various regions in China, conduct some interviews at the same time, and study intensively factors affecting innovation performance in different enterprises. In a word, while expanding the sample size, we would focus on increasing the representation of the sample.Secondly, goal orientation, organizational trust and innovation performance are likely to change the connotation in Chinese context. Because in this study all scales used are developed by foreign scholars, measurement results are biased inevitably. Therefore, future research should pay attention to idiosyncratic factors of china, and develop goal orientation, organizational trust, and innovation performance scale as much as possible, which apply to the Chinese situation.Thirdly, this study did not verify that two dimensions of organizational trust (trust for leader and trust for co-workers) moderates the relationship between learning goal orientation and innovation performance. Scholars may follow this idea to make further research, and explore whether trust for leader and trust for co-workers moderates significantly the relationship between learning goal orientation and innovation performance, which would provide more practical advice for managers.At last, this article provides a perspective for future organizational research, organizational situational factors are likely to moderate the relationship between the personality and organization outcomes. Future scholars may follow this idea to study generation of organization outcomes. |
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