The prosocial-motivated process of meaningful innovation: evidence from Chinese start-ups in digital industry

ABSTRACT

With the increasing prominence of SDGs, the prosocial issues of firms’ innovation activities are gaining more attention. Nevertheless, the micro-foundation of the prosocial innovation process remains unexplored. To fill this gap, we introduce the meaningful innovation (MI) framework in order to develop a moderated mediation model for investigating the prosocial motivated innovation process. By conducting an empirical analysis based on a three-wave survey of 24 small high-tech new ventures in China’s digital industry, we find that (1) as an essential source of external meaning, an employee’s prosocial motivation is positively related to a firm’s innovation performance; (2) employees’ creativity mediates the positive relationship between prosocial motivation and firms’ innovation performance; and (3) although intrinsic motivation does not significantly moderate the above mediation effect, it is positively related to firms’ innovation performance; employees’ creativity also mediates this relationship. This paper contributes to the literature on ‘social value and innovation’ studies by revealing a prosocial-motivated innovation process and ascertaining the micro-foundation of the meaningful innovation framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Prosocial motivated process
• Meaningful Innovation (MI)
• digital start-ups
• Chinese context

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The top management team was defined as the dominant coalition in charge of the small firms, including the CEO, CFO, CTO, and other senior managers participating in the firm’s critical decision-making.

Additional information

Funding

The research has been supported by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2022M713098): Meaning-Oriented Innovation: Conceptual Framework, Process, Mechanisms, and Configurations; Fujian Provincial Social Science Foundation (FJ2020C020).

Notes on contributors

Guannan Qu

Guannan Qu is a Postdoc and Special Research Associate of School of Public Policy and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. His research interests include innovation management, science & technology policy and entrepreneurship. He has published articles in Journal of Knowledge Management and Chinese Management Studies, etc.

Jin Chen

Jin Chen is a professor of Department of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategy of School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, China. His research interests include innovation management, strategic management, and entrepreneurship. He has published articles in journals such as Research Policy, Technovation, R&D Management, etc.

Yuan Jie

Yuan Jie is an Assistant Professor at the Party School of C.P.C, JiangSu Committee. She received her PhD from the School of Economics and Management at the Tsinghua University. Her research focuses on shared leadership loneliness, creativity, and proactive behavior.

Luyao Wang

Luyao Wang is an Assistant Professor of Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, Communication University of China. Her research interests include innovation management, knowledge management and entrepreneurship.

Dong Guo

Dong Guo is a Postdoc and Special Research Associate of School of Public Policy and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interests include innovation management and public policy of S&T.