Can employee's boundary-spanning behavior exactly promote innovation performance? The roles of creative ideas generation and team task interdependence
International Journal of Manpower
ISSN: 0143-7720
Article publication date: 16 December 2020
Issue publication date: 27 July 2021
Abstract
Purpose
The complex and changeable working environment makes individual cross-boundary activities inevitable. Yet, how employee's boundary-spanning behavior (BSB) stimulates innovation performance remains to be further explored. This study aims to analyze the intermediary mechanism and boundary conditions between employee's BSB and innovation performance based on knowledge integration theory.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected data in two waves (July and August 2017) and from two hierarchical levels (from the final sample of 286 employees and their 29 direct supervisors) within ten manufacturing firms located in Nanjing and Anhui, China.
Findings
The results indicate that creative ideas generation mediates the relationship between employee's BSB and innovation performance. Moreover, employees with higher levels of team task interdependence (TTI) lead to a stronger relationship between ideas generation and innovation performance compared to lower levels of TTI (positively moderates the second stage of mediation).
Practical implications
By verifying the key effects of ideas generation and TTI between employee's BSB and innovation performance, the findings of this study provide practical guidance for enterprises to improve the efficiency of employee's BSB.
Originality/value
First, the authors use knowledge integration theory (Grant, 1996a) to deduce the formation process of the mechanism between employee's BSB and his/her innovation results, which clearly shows the driving forces and integral power of the formation process within an individual knowledge integrating system. The authors’ second contribution is further exploring the conditions under which engaging innovative ideas generated by the integration of employee's BSB is more likely to lead to ideas for implementation by examining TTI as a team-level moderator.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Funding: This paper was funded by the First-Class Key Discipline Construction Program of the 13th Five-year Plan for Business Administration of Jiangsu Province (project no. SJY201609).
Citation
Zhang, Q. and Li, J. (2021), "Can employee's boundary-spanning behavior exactly promote innovation performance? The roles of creative ideas generation and team task interdependence", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 42 No. 6, pp. 1047-1063. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-06-2019-0302
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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