Empirical Research On The Relationship Between Leader-Member Exchange And Employee’s Innovative Behavior

Increasing the ability of independent innovation is an important strategic policy of ournational development, and the12th Five-Year Program also made clear that the enterpriseshall continue to unswervingly take the road of independent innovation. Innovation is apractice, the enterprise employee especially junior staff are one of those who are the mostclose to the basic management practice and the basic production. The formation of theemployee’s active innovative consciousness and innovative behavior implementation willdirectly improve productive technology and processes and increase organizationalperformance, which will help the enterprise obtain the opportunities in the fierce competition.However, the innovation of the employee’s suggestion or behavior will break the existingorganization system and organization habit, which usually suffer from boycotting from thoseorganizational members who want to maintain existing thinking and behavior habits.Therefore, in order to realize the innovation, the innovator needs support of innovationprocess. Through the study Scott (1994) found that combining the leadership-membersexchange (LMX) with the innovation may stimulate the employee’s innovative behavior andreduce their worries about the innovative behavior. The existing literatures about leadership-members exchange and the employee’s innovative behavior is seldom, and the research abouttheir specific mechanism is a blank. Therefore, exploring the mechanism between theleadership-members exchange and the employee’s innovative behavior, especially findingthe "bridge" between their relationships not only can provide a new field for innovationresearch direction, but also provide a new train of thought for how to effectively motivateinnovation behavior in the management.Firstly through reviewing the literature and combining with relevant research proposals,the paper established the theme of the study, i.e., researching the mechanism between theleadership-members exchange and the employee’s innovative behavior, and exploring theintermediary effect from the perspective of psychological empowerment. Then through theSPSS18.0statistical software we did the reliability and validity test about the questionnaire,and by using correlation analysis and stepwise regression analysis of some statistical methodswe tested the theoretical model and the research hypotheses, drawing the followingconclusion:(1) both leadership–member exchange and psychological empowerment havesignificant positive influence on the innovative behavior;(2) the leadership-member exchange has a significant positive influence on psychological empowerment;(3)psychologicalempowerment has part intermediary role on the leadership-member exchange andemployee’s innovative behavior. Based on their relationship, the paper suggested somemeasures from improving the quality of leadership–member exchange, increasingemployee’s psychological perception level. Our study extended the research about employee’sinnovative behavior, and provided reference value to promote the innovative development ofthe enterprise.