Author(s)

Qiuling Huang

School of Management, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.

Innovation enables organizations to survive and maintain sustainability in today’s increasingly competitive business environment. Employee innovation is an issue that has received much attention from enterprises and academic circles and has never been out of date. Curiosity is the beginning of the desire for knowledge, has always been regarded as the source of instructions for innovation. However, the idea that curiosity promotes innovation is not supported by empirical research. Here, we broaden our understanding of curiosity in an organizational context through an empirical investigation how work curiosity influences innovation behavior. We also propose that the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the moderating role of job autonomy in the abovementioned relationships. Through two-stage paired tracking and multi-source questionnaire survey, using SPSS22.0 and Mplus7.0, and based on data collected from 247 participants in China, we tested our hypotheses concerning these relationships. The study has implications for enterprises to promote employee innovation, especially through “micro-innovation” to promote “big innovation”.

Work Curiosity, Innovation Behavior, Intrinsic Motivation, Job Autonomy, Trait Activation

Huang, Q. (2021) Can Curious Employees be More Innovative? Exploring the Mechanism of Intrinsic Motivation and Job Autonomy. Psychology, 12, 425-440. doi: 10.4236/psych.2021.123027.