TITLE:
Can Curious Employees be More Innovative? Exploring the Mechanism of Intrinsic Motivation and Job Autonomy
AUTHORS:
Qiuling Huang
KEYWORDS:
Work Curiosity, Innovation Behavior, Intrinsic Motivation, Job Autonomy, Trait Activation
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.12 No.3,
March
31,
2021
ABSTRACT: 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from enterprises and academic circles and has never been out of date.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”.