European Journal of Innovation Management
Emerald Article: How leaders influence employees’ innovative behaviour
Jeroen P.J. de Jong, Deanne N. Den Hartog
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Jeroen P.J. de Jong, Deanne N. Den Hartog, (2007),”How leaders influence employees’ innovative behaviour”, European Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 10 Iss: 1 pp. 41 – 64
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How leaders influence employees innovative behaviour
Jeroen P.J. de Jong
EIM Small Business Research and Consultancy, Zoetermeer,
The Netherlands, and
Deanne N. Den Hartog
University of Amsterdam Business School, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract
Purpose To provide an inventory of leader behaviours likely to enhance employees innovative behaviour, including idea generation and application behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach Based on a combination of literature research and in-depth interviews, the paper explores leadership behaviours that stimulate employees idea generation and application behaviour. The study was carried out in knowledge-intensive service firms (e.g. consultants, researchers, engineers).
Findings It was found that there were 13 relevant leadership behaviours. Although innovative behaviour is crucial in such firms, it has received very little attention from researchers. Leaders influence employees innovative behaviour both through their deliberate actions aiming to stimulate idea generation and application as well as by their more general, daily behaviour.
Research limitations/implications Future quantitative research could condense our overview of leader practices, explore which practices are most relevant to employees idea generation and/or application behaviour, which contingency factors influence the leadership-innovative behaviour connection and provide information as to whether different practices are relevant in other types of firms.
Originality/value Neither the innovation nor the leadership field provides a detailed overview of specific behaviours that leaders might use to stimulate innovation by individual employees. This paper fills that void.
Keywords Leadership, Innovation, Employee behaviour, Ideas generation, Knowledge organizations
Paper type Research paper
Employees innovative behaviour
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1. Introduction
One way for organizations to become more innovative is to capitalize on their employees ability to innovate. As Katz (1964, p. 132) puts it: an organization that depends solely upon its blueprints of prescribed behaviour is a very fragile social system. Work has become more knowledge-based and less rigidly defined. In this context, employees can help to improve business performance through their ability to generate ideas and use these as building blocks for new and better products, services and work processes. Many practitioners and academics now endorse the view that individual innovation helps to attain organizational success (Van de Ven, 1986; Amabile, 1988; Axtellet al., 2000; Smith, 2002; Unsworth and Parker, 2003). In order to realize a continuous flow of innovations, employees need to be both willing and able to innovate. Individual innovation is central to several well-known management principles, including total quality management (McLoughlin and Harris, 1997; Ehigie and Akpan, 2004), continuous improvement schemes (Boer and Gieskes, 1998), Kaizen (Imai, 1986),
European Journal of Innovation
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Management
Vol. 10 No. 1, 2007
pp. 41-64
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1460-1060
DOI 10.1108/14601060710720546
EJIM 10,1
42
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corporate venturing (Elfring, 2003), and organizational learning (Senge, 1990). Here, we address how leaders may influence individual innovation.
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Individual innovation has been operationalised in various ways. For example, the construct has been thought of in terms of a personality characteristic (Hurtet al., 1977) or an output (West, 1987). Others have taken a behavioural perspective (Janssen, 2000). We take the same line as the latter and address the influence of leaders on employees individual innovative behaviour. Much of the behavioural research on individual innovation has focused on creativity, for example, on how leaders can stimulate idea generation. However, when and how creative ideas are implemented, a crucial part of the innovation process, is under-researched. We include both behaviours in the area of idea generation and the application or implementation of these ideas as important elements of innovative behaviour.
As stated, we focus on the innovative behaviour of employees and the role leaders play in enabling and enhancing such behaviour. Previous work has indicated that employees innovative behaviour depends greatly on their interaction with others in the workplace (Andersonet al., 2004; Zhou and Shalley, 2003). In general, leaders have a powerful source of influence on employees work behaviours (Yukl, 2002). Innovative behaviour is no exception. Basadur (2004, p. 103), for instance, notes that in future business the most effective leaders:
. . .will help individuals (. . .) to coordinate and integrate their differing styles through a process of applied creativity that includes continuously discovering and defining new problems, solving those problems and implementing the new solutions.
Despite agreement on the importance of leaders in triggering individual innovation, little integration of leadership and innovation research is found in the literature. Various innovation studies explore the influence of leader behaviours using models developed in relation to performance outcomes, that is, leader behaviours that positively affect outcomes such as effectiveness and efficiency rather than innovation-related outcomes. Based on a special issue of Leadership Quarterly, Mumford and Licuanan (2004, p. 170) concluded that one cannot expect existing leadership models (developed to predict performance in routine settings) to be entirely applicable to the leadership of innovative individuals. Also, as mentioned above, most available research has focused on employee creativity, while the implementation of ideas is explored far less often. Innovation researchers often address a broad range of factors in their studies and, at most, include very brief measures of a single leader behaviour as one such factor amongst many (Cooper, 2003). No conclusions can yet be drawn from current innovation research as to which leader behaviours matter most.
The current study aims to provide more insight into the role of leaders in individual innovation. It uses a combination of in-depth interviews and literature research to explore what particular leader behaviours are likely to enhance employees innovative behaviour. The study is being conducted in knowledge-intensive service firms (e.g. engineering, IT, architecture, consultancy, market research). Knowledge-intensive service firms constitute an ever-increasing share of the business population and add significantly to economic development (Anxo and Storrie, 2001). Compared to other sectors, knowledge-intensive services have an intangible, heterogeneous and perishable nature (Hislop, 2005). Such firms have a strong need for continuous
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minor improvements and additions to their current product offerings, making employees innovative behaviour very important within this context.
2. Background
2.1 Innovative behaviour
Innovation theorists often describe the innovation process as being composed of two main phases: initiation and implementation (Zaltmanet al., 1973; Axtellet al., 2000). The division between the two phases is believed to be the point at which the idea is first adopted; i.e. the point at which the decision to implement the innovation is made. The first stage ends with the production of an idea, while the second stage ends as soon as the idea is implemented (King and Anderson, 2002).
Many studies focus mainly on the creative or idea generation stage of innovation (Mumford, 2000; McAdam and McClelland, 2002). However, innovation also includes the implementation of ideas. Here, we define innovative behaviour as behaviour directed towards the initiation and application (within a work role, group or organization) of new and useful ideas, processes, products or procedures (Farr and Ford, 1990). Thus, defined, innovative behaviour can be seen as a multi-dimensional, overarching construct that captures all behaviours through which employees can contribute to the innovation process. In the current paper, our focus is on two core innovative behaviours that reflect the two-stage process: idea generation and application behaviour. These behaviours were dealt with previously as key steps in the process of individual innovation (Axtellet al., 2000; Krause, 2004; Dorenboschet al., 2005).
To initiate innovations employees can generate ideas by engaging in behaviours to explore opportunities, identify performance gaps or produce solutions for problems. Opportunities to generate ideas lie in incongruities and discontinuities things that do not fit expected patterns, such as problems in existing working methods, unfulfilled needs of customers, or indications that trends may be changing. In the implementation phase employees can play a valuable role in the innovation process by demonstrating application-oriented behaviour. For example, employees with a strong personal commitment to a particular idea may be able to persuade others of its value. Employees can also invest considerable effort in developing, testing and commercialising an idea.
Innovative behaviour is closely related to employee creativity. The demarcation between the two is blurred, as some researchers have proposed models of creativity that also pay attention to the implementation of creative ideas. For example, Basadur (2004) distinguishes between problem finding, problem conceptualisation, problem solving, and solution implementation. In line with this, in a review of creativity research, Mumford (2003) recommends that future work should investigate late cycle skills, i.e. the implementation of creative ideas. He recognizes that real-world performance the expression, shaping and execution of ideas represents another important component of creative work (p. 116), and considers the investigation of implementing ideas to be an important emerging issue.
Other authors have identified and discussed differences between innovative behaviour and creativity. Unlike creativity, innovative behaviour is intended to produce some kind of benefit. Innovative behaviour has a clearer applied component since it is expected to result in innovative output. However, it cannot be said that it comprises application only as innovative behaviours encompass employees
Employees innovative behaviour
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EJIM
behaviours directed at the production of novel
products, services and/or
work
10,1
processes (West and Farr, 1990; Scott and Bruce, 1994). In that sense, creativity can be
seen as a part of innovative behaviour that is most evident in the first phase of the
innovation process, where problems or performance gaps are recognized and ideas
are generated in response to a perceived need for innovation (West, 2002). West (2002)
also suggests that the distinction between creativity and innovative behaviour is one of
44
emphasis rather than substance. Thus, we have used both creativity and innovation
research to identify potentially relevant leader behaviours (see below).
Some previous studies treated employees
innovative behaviour
as a
one-dimensional construct that encompasses both idea generation and application
behaviour (Scott and Bruce, 1994; Janssen, 2000). This implies that differences in
relevant leader behaviours between the two phases remain invisible, which is why
recent work recommends keeping these phases of the innovation process separate
(Mumford and Licuanan, 2004). We follow this suggestion and address both idea
generation and application.
2.2 Leadership
The term leadership means different things to different people. Although no ultimate
definition of leadership exists (Yukl, 2002), the majority of definitions of leadership
reflect some basic elements, including group influence and goal (Bryman, 1992).
We think of leadership as the process of influencing others towards achieving some
kind of desired outcome.
Leadership research has taken different perspectives, leader traits, behaviours, and
the influence of situational characteristics on leader effectiveness, for example, have all
been studied. In the past 20 years, transformational and charismatic leadership
approaches have gained in popularity (Den Hartog and Koopman, 2001). We limit
ourselves to the behavioural perspective and address how leader behaviour influences
employees idea generation and application behaviour. Although the impact of leaders
seems intuitively appealing, most behavioural leadership studies look at performance
or effective outcomes rather than innovation-related outcomes.
Available research on the relationship between leader behaviour and individual
innovation has investigated transformational leadership, participative leadership, and
leader-member exchange (LMX) theory. Transformational leadership is hypothesized
to encourage creativity (Kahaiet al., 2003; Shin and Zhou, 2003). As transformational
leaders stimulate followers to view problems in new ways and help them to develop to
their full potential, this is likely to result in the enhanced creativity of followers.
However, previous studies show mixed results. Kahaiet al. (2003) used an electronic
meeting system with students in a laboratory experiment to investigate the impact of
leadership, anonymity and rewards on creativity-relevant processes and outcomes. As
a by-product they found a positive impact of transformational leadership. However, an
experiment by Jaussi and Dionne (2003) found little effect of transformational
leadership on creativity. In contrast, field research by Shin and Zhou (2003) in Korea
showed that transformational leadership was positively related to follower creativity.
Participative leadership involves the use of various decision-making procedures
that determine the extent to which people can influence the leaders decisions and have
the autonomy to design and perform their own tasks. Participative leadership can
take different forms, including consultation, joint
decision making and delegation
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(Yukl, 2002). Such leadership has been identified as an antecedent of individual innovation. Judgeet al. (1997), for example, interviewed R&D managers, scientists, and technicians from new biotechnology firms and concluded that giving employees operational autonomy encouraged an innovative culture. In a study among the employees of a manufacturing plant, Axtellet al. (2000) found a positive relationship between participation and employees innovative behaviour, measured using self-ratings of employees suggestions and implementation efforts. Similarly, Frischer (1993) found that when product-development managers gave authority to their subordinates and provided them with a sense of responsibility, subordinates were aware of a positive innovation climate.
LMX theory focuses on the social exchange relationships between leaders and employees. It proposes that the quality of the relationship between a leader and follower influences outcomes such as subordinate satisfaction, supervisor satisfaction, performance, commitment, role conflict, role clarity and turnover intentions (Yukl, 2002). Some suggest that the quality of the relationship between a leader and follower is also related to innovativeness (Graen and Scandura, 1987). High-quality exchange relationships include providing employees with challenging tasks, support in risky situations and the provision of task-related resources and recognition, all facilitating individual innovation. In line with this, Tierney et al. (1999) found a positive relationship between high-quality relationships and creativity in a study among R&D leaders and employees of a chemical firm. Janssen and van Yperen (2004) also found that high-quality relationships had a positive impact on the broader construct of innovative behaviour.
In conclusion, most studies on the connection between leadership and individual innovation have explored the role of theory-based leadership styles, originally developed for other purposes such as the assessment of leaders impact on performance or effectiveness rather than innovation-related outcomes. They did not attempt to develop models aimed specifically at finding out how leader behaviour could stimulate the innovative behaviour of employees. Leadership models developed for more routine settings may not generalize to the leadership of innovative people (Mumford and Licuanan, 2004). Also, the studies that were carried out focus on the leaders role in stimulating creativity (Shalley and Gilson, 2004), whereas the role of leaders in employees implementation of innovations received little attention. We, therefore, explored how leaders may trigger both these aspects of employees innovative behaviour.
There are various views as to how leadership differs from management and entrepreneurship. Leadership is seen as a subset of managerial activities, others see leading and managing as overlapping roles, yet others describe them as different processes. For example, Kotter (1990) differentiates their intended outcomes: management seeks to produce predictability and order, while leadership aims to produce change. In Kotters view, leaders and managers are not necessarily different persons, but rather different roles. This also holds for entrepreneurship. For example, when organizations grow beyond a few employees, entrepreneurs (should) start worrying about how followers must be directed towards specific goals (Shane, 2003). In this study, entrepreneurship, management and leadership are roles that are not mutually exclusive. Most of our interviewees fulfilled all three roles, including being a leader as part of their work. They are also managers and most were the entrepreneurs that started their firm. We thus use leader manager and entrepreneur interchangeably in referring to the interviewees.
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