Innovative Behavior and the Reciprocal Exchange Between Employees and Organizations**/Innovatives Verhalten Und Der Wechselseitige Austausch Zwischen Mitarbeitern Und Organisationen

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Innovative Behavior and the Reciprocal Exchange Between Employees and Organizations**/Innovatives Verhalten Und Der Wechselseitige Austausch Zwischen Mitarbeitern Und Organisationen

Introduction

Innovation is an important factor in helping organizations survive in a world full of changes (Fagerberg 2005; Westland 2008). While confronting the challenge of innovation, organizations do not merely rely on certain employees working in the research and development department. Instead, organizations try to mobilize the creative potential of all the employees (Bessant 2003). Thus, organizations are dependent on the knowledge, the creativity and the innovative engagement of their employees. However, since the relationship between employees and organizations can be characterized by diverging interests (Torrington/Hall/Taylor 2005), organizations cannot completely rely on the employees acting in accordance to the goals of the organization voluntarily (Etzioni, 1965). From this point of view, employees are primarily interested in their individual job and income security, career and developmental perspectives as well as being valued by the organization, whereas organizations are mainly interested in productivity, sales numbers or market shares (Organ/Podsakoff/MacKenzie 2006). Thus, one cannot assume that being creative and innovative is in accordance with the employees' interests in every case. Moreover, making innovative suggestions could also be rather risky as well and lead to unintended consequences for the employees, such as failures, conflicts with other employees and or supervisors or greater work demands Qanssen/van der Vliert/West 2004). Thus, innovative behavior could have consequences which contradict the employees' interests.

In managing innovation, organizations have to find a way to bridge the gap between diverging interests of employees and organizations and to motivate innovative behavior among employees regardless of the potential risks which accompany such behavior. In reference to Etzioni (1965), organizations establish control structures in order to ensure that the members of the organization act as desired. Economic organizations, in particular, are characterized by utilitarian power as the predominant form of control. This form of control is mainly exerted by means of material rewards. That means, economic organizations especially rely on providing monetary rewards in exchange for desired employee behavior.

In the context of innovation management, organizations try to establish reward systems to foster creativity or innovative behavior among employees (Leach/ Stride /Wood 2006). Empiric...

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