Determinants of employee innovation: an open innovation perspective

ABSTRACT

Based on the open innovation theory, this study proposes a conceptual model of external search and organizational support as determinants of employee innovation in the hotel industry. We used structural equation modeling on quantitative survey data of 291 hotel employees to test the research hypotheses. The results indicate that external search and organizational support positively affect employee innovative behavior. While the results fully support the mediating effect of knowledge sharing on the relationship between external search and employee innovative behavior, they only partially support this effect on the relationship between organizational support and employee innovative behavior. The results also reveal that the interaction effect of external search and organizational support positively affects employee innovative behavior and is fully mediated by knowledge sharing. The study explores the antecedents of employee innovation from both outside and inside the organization and extends the open innovation paradigm to individual-level innovation research in hospitality.

本研究以开放式创新理论为基础，提出饭店业员工创新的外部搜寻与组织支持的概念模型. 本文采用结构方程模型对291名饭店员工的定量调查数据进行了检验. 结果显示，外部搜寻与组织支持对员工创新行为有正向影响. 研究结果完全支持知识共享对外部搜索与员工创新行为的中介作用，但仅部分支持知识共享对组织支持与员工创新行为的中介作用. 研究结果还表明，外部搜寻与组织支持的交互作用对员工创新行为有正向影响，并完全通过知识共享来实现. 本研究从组织内外两方面探讨了员工创新的前因，并将开放式创新范式扩展到酒店业个人层面的创新研究.

KEYWORDS:

• Open innovation
• external search
• organizational support
• knowledge sharing
• employee innovative behavior

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Shandong Quality curriculum for postgraduate education of China in 2020 [SDYKC20003]; Shandong Teaching Cases of Professional Master Degree of China in 2019 [SDYAL19010]; Shandong Social Science Foundation of China [20CSTJ13]; Shandong Natural Science Foundation of China [ZR2019MG014]; Shandong University Humanities and Social Sciences Team Project of China [20820IFYT15002].