The Study Of Relationships Between Organizational Innovation Climate And Employee Innovation Behavior

With the fierce competition and rapidly changing market environment, the traditional agriculture and manufacturing industry gradually turn to information and service industry. The source of competitive advantage of enterprises has turned from tangible assets which include land, materials, funds into knowledge as the main body of the intangible assets. In the background of knowledge economy era, more and more people will be engaged in knowledge’s creation, spread and application. Employees as creators of knowledge cause the enterprise’s attention. Therefore, how to develop staff’s creativity and turn knowledge into intellectual capital and business capital is one of the strategic problems which the leaders must consider. So "innovation" is an important asset that enables an organization to succeed in a dynamic business environment, and the study of employee innovation behavior is the foundation of team and corporate innovation theory which also connects with the corporate performance and survival.Organization Innovation climate is an important contextual factor that signals expectations for behavior and potential outcomes of these behaviors (James, Hartman, Stebbins,&Jones,1977). Although many scholars have proved that organization innovation climate plays an important role in employee innovation behavior through empirical study, there are few studies to carry on comprehensive analysis and verification about the process between them. Social cognitive theory suggests that people’s thought and behavior are an interaction process among behavior, personal factors and environmental factors which overthrew the traditional behaviorism and stimulate response theory. It emphasizes the important role of people’s initiative in situation and the acts inspiration. People act on the basis of consequences or, more specifically, the expected consequences of their behavior, according to behavioral theories such as the expectancy theory of motivation (Vroom,1964).Therefore, the consideration for outcome of behavior which is called outcome expectation might affect employee innovation behavior. This study aims to explore the relationships among organizational innovation climate, outcome expectations and employee innovation behavior.First, this research introduces the background of this study, the research question, the significance of the study and the method. Then we reviews the relevant literatures about organizational innovation climate, outcome expectations, and employee innovation behavior. It has been discussed about the definition of innovation and employee innovation behavior, the measurements of them and also the motivation mechanism. Different scholars made a different definition about innovation and employee innovation behavior. This study uses the definition by Amabile which suggests that innovation is the process of putting creative thoughts into practice. And about employee innovation behavior, we agree with Kleysen&Street who consider that employee innovation behavior is producing novel and useful products, processes, or services and implementing them at the individual, group, or organizational level. A variety of factors have been studied as important antecedents to individuals’innovation, such as organization culture and climate (Scott&Bruce,1994), leadership style(Oldham&Cummings,1999),the relationship between team members(Shally,2004), job characteristics (e.g, Oldham&Cummings,1996), and individual differences (Scott&Bruce,1994). Researchers basically studied that from two aspects which are individuals and environment. Moreover, this study defined "organization innovation climate" as "individual cognitive representations of the organizational setting expressed in terms that reflect psychologically meaningful interpretations of the situation". Outcome expectation is a concept in psychology which means whether some kind of behavior can produce the desired result. At present, few researchers examined outcome expectations related with innovation. This study adopts the two-dimension structure outcome expectations by Woodman in2010.On the basis of literature review, this study put forward18theoretical assumptions, and constructed a theoretical model of organizational innovation climate, outcome expectations and employee innovation behavior. Then we defined the variables and chose the measuring tools. Next, we developed the questionnaire reference to mature scales and Chinese background. Before the formal investigation, we have made the pre-test in order to examine the reliability of scales. According to the results of analysis to pre-test, we adjusted the scales to set up the formal questionnaire. We collected213effective questionnaires totally. First, we used SPSS to analysis the sample’s distribution through descriptive statistic analysis. Second, we did reliability analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, All the indexes meet the requirement. Last, we did correlation and regression analysis to test the relationship of the three variables and whether outcome expectations is a mediator between organizational innovation climate, employee innovate behavior. The results of the study are as follows:(1) In innovation behavior field, outcome expectations is a multidimensional concept which includes expected positive performance outcomes and expected relationships gains.(2)This study confirms four dimensions of organizational innovation climate which are colleague supports, supervisory supports, organizational encouragement and job characteristics are positively related to employee innovation behavior. However, sufficient resources have no significant prediction function with employee innovation behavior in our study.(3)Supervisory supports, organizational encouragement and job characteristics have a remarkable effect on expected positive performance outcomes, while colleague supports and sufficient resources haven’t showed a significant influence on expected positive performance outcomes.(4) Colleague supports, supervisory supports, organizational encouragement all have a remarkable effect on expected relationships gains, but job characteristics and sufficient resources have no significant prediction function with expected relationships gains.(5) Expected positive performance outcomes is positively related to employee innovation behavior.(6) Expected relationships gains is positively related to employee innovation behavior.(7) Outcome expectations plays a partly intermediary role in the interaction of organizational innovation climate and employee innovation behavior.