Under what circumstances are employees most willing to innovate? The impact of time pressure and organizational life-history strategies

Subjects: Psychology >> Management Psychology submitted time 2021-06-12

张玉 尹彬

Abstract： [Objective] With organizations’ fast-paced development, employees' passion for work and their innovative behavior in the workplace inevitably faces the influences of time pressure as well as the life-history strategy of the organization’s development. According to the two-dimensional view of pressure, time pressure can be categorized into the challenge time pressure and the hindrance time pressure. According to the view of organizational duality, innovative behavior can be categorized into exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation. At the same time, the life-history strategy in the field of behavioral ecology can be introduced into organizational development to describe the pace and focus of an organization’s developmental strategy, and thus the life-history strategy of organizational development can be divided into the K strategy and the r strategy. [Methods] Through three survey experiments (Study 1, Study 2 and Study 3) and a questionnaire survey (Study 4), this paper explores the impact of different types of time pressure and organizational life-history strategies on employees' innovative behavior, and the role of employees' work passion in it. [Results] Study 1a (n = 75) and Study 1b (n = 74) found that the K strategy had a promoting effect on the participants’ exploratory innovation and harmonious work passion, and the r strategy had a promoting effect on the participants’ exploitative innovation and compulsory work passion. Study 2 (n = 282) found that compared with the hindrance time pressure, the challenge time pressure significantly promoted harmonious work passion and exploratory innovation while significantly inhibited compulsory work passion and exploitative innovation. Study 3 (n = 206) further verified the results of Study 1 and Study 2, and found the influences of four combinations of time pressure and organizational life-history strategy on work passion and innovation. Study 4 (n = 400) not only supported the findings of Study 3, but also further revealed the mediating roles that harmonious work passion and compulsive work passion played on the relationship between the combination of time pressure and organizational life-history strategy and the two types of innovative behavior. [Implications] The results suggest that: 1. The organizational life-history strategy has a direct impact on employees’ innovative behavior, with the K strategy promoting exploratory innovation and the r strategy promoting exploitative innovation, but these effects are not mediated by work passion; 2. The type of time pressure has a direct impact on employees’ work passion and an indirect impact on innovative behavior, with the challenge time pressure promoting exploratory innovation via elevating harmonious work passion and the hindrance time pressure promoting exploitative innovation via elevating compulsory work passion; 3. The impact of different combinations of time pressure and organizational development life history strategies on employees can be summarized into four types: the harmonious exploration type, the harmonious exploitation type, the positive contradiction type and the negative contradiction type. From the dual perspectives of the meso-level organizational life-history strategy and the micro-level time pressure, this study indicates the differential impacts and mechanisms of different combinations of organizational life-history strategy and time pressure on employees’ work passion and innovative behavior, which provides useful insights for the daily management practice of innovative organizations."

Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review

 Hits 3028  Downloads 1124  Comment