Enhancing IT industry employees’ service innovation performance: antecedents and outcomes of service innovation engagement

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to explore how information technology (IT) companies that provide professional information systems/IT solutions to business clients can enhance employees’ service innovation performance.

Design/methodology/approach

Self-reported data were collected from 251 employees over two periods, along with their supervisor-reported data. The model was tested using structural equation modeling.

Findings

Employees’ engagement fully mediates the impact of innovative self-efficacy and social identification on service innovation performance. Employees’ customer orientation and feeling trusted both strengthen the transformation of service innovation engagement into service innovation performance. However, IT employees’ embeddedness, unexpectedly, significantly weakens the link between engagement and performance in business-to-business (B2B) service innovation contexts.

Research limitations/implications

The sample was collected in Taiwan, where the IT industry is dominant and employees’ values and team interactions are influenced by Chinese culture. Data drawn from a single industry, involving a particular culture, limit claims of external validity.

Practical implications

Managers can encourage participative decision-making, or hold official platforms where peers and clients can exchange ideas, leading to higher levels of feeling trusted and customer orientation, which both strengthen the link between service innovation engagement and performance. Moreover, highly embedded members can easily discuss novel ideas with team members and obtain improvement-oriented feedback, which ensures highly embedded members can keep focusing on service innovation.

Originality/value

This study provides a more nuanced picture of predictive factors for individual innovation behavior in B2B service innovation contexts in which employees provide business clients with professional, innovative IT solutions through team-based projects.

Citation

Pai, P., Tsai, H.-T. and Zhong, J.-Y. (2022), "Enhancing IT industry employees’ service innovation performance: antecedents and outcomes of service innovation engagement", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 56 No. 8, pp. 2455-2483. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-11-2020-0842