What drives different employee types of innovative behaviour? Development and test of an integrative model of employee driven innovation in German firms

Abstract

Innovation is typically attributed to certain groups of employees such as functional specialists, professionals, and R&D experts. The innovative potential of lower-level employees is often overlooked. With this study, we contribute to innovation research by analysing the innovative behaviour of ordinary employees compared to other kinds of employees from whom highly innovative behaviours are expected. We develop and test an integrative model of employee driven innovation consisting of different intra-organisational drivers and simultaneously control for personal characteristics. Our results show that the most important factor for influencing innovative behaviour is an appropriate job design that includes autonomy and innovativeness as job requirements. In addition, the personal factors of openness to new experiences and role breadth self-efficacy seem to be essential. Moreover, we found that the degree of innovative behaviour of ordinary employees is not significantly different from other groups of employees who are expected to focus on innovation activities.