Individual innovation in the workplace: the role of performance and image outcome expectations

Why do people engage in innovative behavior in the workplace? More specifically, what motivational reasons affect an employee?s decision to introduce new product ideas, apply new work methods, and suggest new ways to achieve objectives? Based on the efficiency-oriented perspective and the social-political perspective in understanding innovation, I hypothesize and test expected positive performance outcomes, expected image risks, and expected image gains as proximal determinants of individual innovative behavior at work, and examine how they mediate the effects of more distal antecedents. Adopting a contingency approach, I also examine the explanatory power of performance and image outcome expectations under different reward contingency situations. The theoretical framework was tested in a field study. I found a significant positive effect of expected positive performance outcomes and a significant negative effect of expected image risks on employee innovative behavior. Five distal antecedents (perceived organization support for innovation, supervisor relationship quality, innovativeness as job requirement, reputation as innovative, and dissatisfaction with the status quo) had indirect effects on innovative behavior by either increasing expectedpositive performance outcomes or reducing expected image risks, or both. The effect of expected positive performance outcomes was stronger when perceived performance-reward contingency was high. The effect of expected image risks was stronger when perceived image-reward contingency was high. Implications were discussed in terms of building a multiple-perspective framework for understanding innovative behavior and designing managerial strategies to encourage employee innovativeness.