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Measuring employee innovation: A review of existing scales and the development of the innovative behavior and innovation support inventories across cultures

Martin Lukes (Department of Entrepreneurship, University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic)
Ute Stephan (Economics, Finance and Entrepreneurship Group, Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK)

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research

ISSN: 1355-2554

Article publication date: 9 January 2017

10418

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model of employee innovative behavior conceptualizing it as distinct from innovation outputs and as a multi-faceted behavior rather than a simple count of “innovative acts” by employees. It understands individual employee innovative behaviors as a micro-foundation of firm intrapreneurship that is embedded in and influenced by contextual factors such as managerial, organizational and cultural support for innovation. Building from a review of existing employee innovative behavior scales and theoretical considerations the authors develop and validate the Innovative Behavior Inventory (IBI) and the Innovation Support Inventory (ISI).

Design/methodology/approach

Two pilot studies, a third validation study in the Czech Republic and a fourth cross-cultural validation study using population representative samples from Switzerland, Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic (n=2,812 employees and 450 entrepreneurs) were conducted.

Findings

Both inventories were reliable and showed factorial, criterion, convergent and discriminant validity as well as cross-cultural equivalence. Employee innovative behavior was supported as comprising of idea generation, idea search, idea communication, implementation starting activities, involving others and overcoming obstacles. Managerial support was the most proximal contextual influence on innovative behavior and mediated the effect of organizational support and national culture.

Originality/value

The paper advances the understanding of employee innovative behavior as a multi-faceted phenomenon and the contextual factors influencing it. Where past research typically focuses on convenience samples within a particular country, the authors offer first robust evidence that the model of employee innovative behavior generalizes across cultures and types of samples. The model and the IBI and ISI inventories enable researchers to build a deeper understanding of the important micro-foundation underpinning intrapreneurial behavior in organizations and allow practitioners to identify their organizations’ strengths and weaknesses related to intrapreneurship.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the European Commission, project CID – Culture and Innovation Dynamics: Explaining the Uneven Distribution of Human Knowledge (No. FP6-043345). The authors would like to thank the cooperators in Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

Citation

Lukes, M. and Stephan, U. (2017), "Measuring employee innovation: A review of existing scales and the development of the innovative behavior and innovation support inventories across cultures", International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 136-158. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-11-2015-0262

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited

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