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Linking managerial practices and Linking

managerial
leadership style to innovative practices and
leadership style
work behavior
545
The role of group and psychological processes
Received 3 October 2013
Carlo Odoardi Revised 31 March 2014
Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy 30 April 2014
20 June 2014
Francesco Montani Accepted 20 June 2014
Department of Psychology, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada
Jean-Sébastien Boudrias
Department of Psychology, University of Montréal, Montréal, Canada, and
Adalgisa Battistelli
Laboratory of Psychology, Health and Quality of Life EA 4139,
University Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a theoretical model linking individual
perceptions of participative leadership style and managerial practices (i.e. teamwork and information
sharing) to individual innovative behavior through the mediating mechanisms of: perceptions of team
support for innovation and team vision; and psychological empowerment.
Design/methodology/approach – Self-report data were collected from 394 employees working in
five organizations. Structural equation models were conducted to empirically test the hypothesized
research model.
Findings – As hypothesized, participative leadership, teamwork and information sharing positively
predicted perceptions of team support for innovation and team vision, which in turn fostered
psychological empowerment. The latter was further positively associated with innovative performance.
Practical implications – The results of the present study inform management of the group
processes (i.e. team vision and support for innovation) that can mobilize employees to engage in
effective innovative activities. Importantly, the findings indicate that for such processes to be
developed and nurtured, teamwork activities should be promoted within work groups, effective
communication systems should be implemented throughout the organization, and participatory skills
should be developed among supervisors.
Originality/value – The study represents one of the first attempts to investigate the perceived group
and psychological processes that can explain how managerial practices and leadership style jointly
benefit employee innovative behavior.
Keywords Leadership, Psychological empowerment, Managerial practices, Group processes,
Innovative work behaviour
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Organizations have increasingly relied on employees’ innovative contributions to
preserve or enhance competitiveness, effectiveness, and continuous improvement
Leadership & Organization
in uncertain and dynamic environments (Anderson et al., 2004). As a consequence, Development Journal
organizational scholars have investigated the impact of personal and situational factors Vol. 36 No. 5, 2015
pp. 545-569
on individual innovative behavior at work (Hammond et al., 2011), which refers to the © Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0143-7739
intentional generation, promotion, and implementation of new and useful ideas in order DOI 10.1108/LODJ-10-2013-0131
LODJ to benefit role performance, the group, or the organization (West and Farr, 1990;
36,5 Janssen, 2000). In particular, empirical studies have provided meaningful insights into
the psychological processes that help explain how perceived group and contextual
characteristics are linked to innovative outcomes (e.g. Choi, 2004; Zhang and Bartol,
2010; Scott and Bruce, 1994).
Notwithstanding these findings, however, research to date has not clearly identified
546 the characteristics of the broader organizational context that can shape perceptions of
favorable innovation-supportive group processes, nor has it adequately assessed the
role of these processes in nurturing positive psychological reactions that foster
individual innovative endeavors (Lim and Choi, 2009). In order to bridge these research
gaps, we therefore propose and test a theoretical model of innovative work behavior,
whereby individual perceptions of situational factors (i.e. participative leadership,
teamwork practices, and information sharing practices) are expected to prompt
employees’ innovativeness by sequentially shaping: employees’ perceptions of team
processes (i.e. group vision and group support for innovation); and an individual
motivational process (i.e. psychological empowerment). This model, which is depicted
in Figure 1, was empirically examined in five organizations that placed explicit
demands and expectations for innovation to their teams and employees. Additionally,
perceptions of situational and group processes differed among individuals in the five
organizational contexts, which make them relevant to study in relation with individual
innovative behaviors.
The present study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, by assessing
the relationship between employees’ perception of participative leadership, information
sharing, teamwork and group vision, and support for innovation, this study seeks to
shed further light on those situational characteristics that can positively contribute to
developing and nourishing a group environment that is perceived as innovation
oriented by the employees. Second, by analyzing the mediating role of perceived group
processes and psychological empowerment this study represents one of the first
attempts to disclose the black box of perceived group and psychological mechanisms
through which perceived managerial practices and leadership style can ensure the
effective innovative performance of employees. Third, it seeks to extend the stream of
research on the effects of leadership and managerial practices on psychological
empowerment, as the mediating role of perceived group vision and support for
innovation in this relationship is assessed for the first time. In doing so, our study
answers recent calls to investigate the role of team dynamics in fostering individual

Perceptions of
contextual factors
Perceptions of group
processes
Teamwork
Group
support for Innovative
innovation Psychological
work
Information empowerment
behavior
sharing
Figure 1. Group vision
The theoretical
model of innovative Participative
leadership
work behavior
empowerment (Seibert et al., 2011). Fourth, by examining the indirect joint contribution Linking
of employees’ perceptions of leadership style and managerial practices on individual managerial
innovativeness, it further addresses Hammond et al.’s (2011) call to assess different
situational characteristics simultaneously, rather than investigating them in a
practices and
“one-at-time” manner, in order to provide a more detailed understanding of their effects leadership style
on innovative processes and outcomes. Finally, our study is among the first to
assess distal contextual variables in relation to innovative work behavior. In doing so, 547
our research informs practitioners and mangers on how specific aspects of the work
environment that are directly controllable by the organization (i.e. leadership behaviors,
teamwork activities, and management of information) can be developed in order to
nurture those less observable (and thus less manageable) psychological processes that
underlie individual innovativeness (i.e. psychological empowerment)[1].

Managerial practices, leadership style, and group processes

Adopting the widely accepted input-process-output model (Hackman, 1987; Salas et al.,
2004), scholars argued that innovation-supportive group processes, which directly
contribute to innovative outputs, can be enhanced by several input variables, including
aspects of organizational context (e.g. task and associated objectives, reward systems,
information systems, and training resources) (West, 2002).
Nevertheless, these assumptions have rarely received empirical support, as
most studies have disregarded how distal context can foster those perceived
innovation-relevant group processes that are likely to result in effective innovative
performances at work (e.g. Tjosvold et al., 2004; Vinarski-Peretz and Carmeli, 2011;
Gilson and Shalley, 2004). We will therefore address this issue by assessing the
relationship between different perceived contextual factors and individual perceptions
of two group processes that have been widely recognized to positively affect innovation
at work, namely, group vision and group support for innovation (West, 2002; Hülsheger
et al., 2009)[2].
Group vision is defined as “an idea of a valued outcome which represents a higher
order and motivating force at work” (West, 1990, p. 310). As West (2002) argued,
innovative outcomes are more likely to be achieved when vision is clear, negotiated,
shared, constantly evolving, valued within the group and relatively attainable.
Furthermore, to the extent that innovation constitutes an important team requirement
and is therefore included within the strategic goals of the group (Camelo-Ordaz et al.,
2008), perceived clarity of team objectives is likely to facilitate innovation by enabling
focussed development of new ideas, channeling employees’ efforts and giving meaning
to their work (West and Anderson, 1996). Support for innovation, which refers to “the
expectation, approval and practical support of attempts to introduce new and improved
ways of doing things in the work environment” (West, 1990, p. 315), is also a critical
component for teams’ and employees’ creative and innovative performances. In a
perceived innovation-supportive work environment, employees might realize that their
creative and innovative contributions are valued and are more likely to respond by
exhibiting higher levels of creative and innovative behaviors. Numerous empirical
works have effectively indicated that both vision and support for innovation enhance
team members’ innovativeness (Hülsheger et al., 2009; West and Anderson, 1996;
Gilson and Shalley, 2004; Amabile et al., 1996).
Given the critical function exerted by these processes in leveraging innovative
performance at work, it is therefore relevant to assess how the broader organizational
context can positively contribute to a change-oriented group environment that provides
LODJ a sense of purpose and sustains innovative efforts of employees. We will thus take into
36,5 account individual perceptions of three specific situational factors that are assumed to
be positively linked to perceptions of group vision and group support for innovation:
teamwork practices, information sharing practices, and participative leadership.
In the next three sections we advance hypotheses explaining the relationships between
these contextual variables and perceived innovation-oriented group processes, which
548 constitute the first central argument of our study.

Teamwork
Research has not directly assessed the extent to which teamwork facilitates or inhibits
innovative performance of employees. Yet, when groups have to work collectively
to accomplish key innovation-oriented outcomes, employees’ perceptions of management’s
emphasis on teamwork activities may indirectly support employees’ efforts to develop and
introduce new and useful ways of doing things, by fostering team members’ commitment
to team innovative objectives and contributing toward an innovation-supportive group
environment. First, individual perceptions of teamwork can positively influence
group vision by enhancing employees’ beliefs that work-related group objectives are
effectively attainable. Indeed, when team members recognize they have to work together
to realize innovative work tasks, they are expected to contribute interactively, rather
than in isolation, to accomplish them (Van de Ven et al., 1976; Tesluk et al., 1997).
By engaging in collective collaborative efforts to meet task requirements, employees will
be better able to efficiently exploit their skills and abilities to achieve innovative
group goals, thereby experiencing a greater sense of hopefulness that future team
outcomes will be successfully accomplished (Isabella and Waddock, 1994). Furthermore,
individual perceptions of teamwork increase coordination and communication among
team members (Stewart, 2006). This allows employees to achieve clearer understanding
of group objectives, as well as to exchange and integrate perspectives and solutions
into effective goal-oriented decision-making processes, which will increase team
members’ acceptance of team goals (Van der Vegt and Van de Vliert, 2002; Hülsheger
et al., 2009).
Employees’ perceptions of teamwork are also expected to improve the amount of
perceived support provided by the group to new and useful ideas. Indeed, for teams
where innovation is part of their assigned job requirements, the more individuals
perceive themselves as part of a team, the more likely it is that they will mutually
cooperate to achieve common innovation-related outcomes, thereby supporting
innovative efforts to accomplish them (Hoegl and Gemuenden, 2001; Tjosvold, 1998).
Moreover, by facilitating communication flows among group members, teamwork
activities set the stage for promotion of ideas within the group environment, which will
increase the likelihood that innovative methods or solutions will be accepted and
supported by the team members (Payne, 1990). Accordingly, we hypothesize:
H1a. Perceptions of teamwork are positively related to individual perceptions of
group vision.
H1b. Perceptions of teamwork are positively related to individual perceptions of
group support for innovation.
Information sharing
Information sharing depicts employees’ perception of the degree to which a variety
of information is provided within the work environment regarding core aspects
of their organization (Boselie et al., 2000). This factor has not been examined Linking
yet in relation to either team vision or support for innovation. However, research managerial
has demonstrated that similar constructs related to communication flows and
exchange of information exert a pivotal role in fostering innovation processes,
practices and
including clarity of organizational goals (Patterson et al., 2005); internal and leadership style
external communication (Burke et al., 2006); and diversity of information (Gielnik
et al., 2012). In this regard, we posit that information sharing further contributes 549
to foster employees’ commitment to the teams’ goals and to develop a group
environment that is perceived as supportive to the production of and application of
new ideas.
The rationale underlying this proposition is derived from the sense-making
literature, which suggests that the information transmitted by top management
shapes individuals’ sense making through sense giving (Bartunek et al., 1999; Gioia
and Chittipeddi, 1991). When managers communicate strategic information
concerning goals, plans, and activities of the firm, employees are likely to achieve
a broader understanding of their organization. Importantly, sense-making theory
and research indicate that it is specifically through their constant interactions
and exchanges with their proximal environment (i.e. the group) that individuals
interpret and acquire the meaning of the organization and of its objectives and
processes (Weick, 1995; Weick et al., 1999). In line with this perspective, it is
therefore reasonable to suggest that, for firms where innovation is part of the core
job requirements, information sharing practices provide a context in which the
individuals will attribute meaning to the organizational innovation-related goals,
plans, and activities. Moreover, because, such meaning-making process occurs
though interactions and exchanges within the boundaries of the proximal group
environment, it would be the team itself that will provide employees with a specific
portrait of the group’s evaluation and interpretation of the organization’s objectives
and standards of innovation. Accordingly, it is likely that information sharing
practices, by means of their sense-giving function, will enable employees to obtain
a higher understanding and clarity of their team’s innovative goals, resulting in
positive individual perceptions of the group vision.
Additionally, information sharing practices, by fostering sense making, help
reduce uncertainty and ambiguity regarding the organizational innovation-related
goals and processes. This is essential to promote adaptive attitudes and,
consequently, enhance employees’ contribution to the organization (Van den
Heuvel et al., 2013). Thus, in line with a sense-making perspective, it is likely that the
group itself will develop such adaptive orientations and, consequently, will
contribute to the organization’s innovation-related goals by encouraging and
supporting the individual attempts to innovative. Taken together, the above
arguments therefore suggests that management’s information sharing practices
enable sense making concerning the innovation-related strategic objectives, plans,
activities, and standards of the firm, thereby contributing to enhancing positive
individual perceptions of team vision and support for innovation. Accordingly, we
hypothesize:
H2a. Perceptions of information sharing within the organization are positively
related to individual perceptions of group vision.
H2b. Perceptions of information sharing within the organization are positively
related to individual perceptions of group support for innovation.
LODJ Participative leadership
36,5 Among the three contextual antecedents that are being examined, leadership style is
the one that has received most attention within the innovation literature. Indeed,
beyond extensively supporting the direct contribution of leader’s behaviors and
styles in fostering followers’ creativity and innovation (Hammond et al., 2011;
Stenmark et al., 2011; Amabile et al., 1996), researchers have begun to investigate
550 how leadership-group interactions can enhance or inhibit innovative processes (e.g.
Sun et al., 2012).
In order to shed further light on how leaders can affect innovation-supportive group
processes, we test the role of participative leadership in fostering team vision and
team support for innovation. In this regard, we first posit that leaders who adopt a
participative style will affect the extent to which team members are collectively
committed to group vision. Indeed, by giving followers the opportunity to voice their
ideas and suggestions, participative supervisors enhance collective involvement in
setting future goals (Wegge, 2000), which increases the likelihood that team vision will
be shared and valued by the group. Research has provided indirect support for this
assumption, by revealing that goal setting is more effective in fostering commitment to
team goals when members have the possibility to participate in defining the goals
themselves, as they would gain clearer understanding of future objectives and would
experience a higher sense of ownership of them (Wegge, 2000; Gibson, 2001; Lee and
Wei, 2011). Therefore, by enhancing intrateam communication and encouraging the
expression of different ideas and perspectives, participative leaders are expected to
value and support collective contribution to the definition of group objectives and
strategies to achieve them, which would ensure clarity about and commitment to a
shared vision.
Leaders who adopt a participative style will further improve the level of support
enacted by the team to followers’ innovative endeavors. Indeed, the relationship
between participative leadership and team support for innovation can be explained as a
social learning process, whereby repeated observations and interactions with leaders
inform group members of those behaviors that are valued and recognized within that
environment and contribute to regulate their conducts (Dragoni, 2005; Sun et al., 2012;
Scott and Bruce, 1994). In this regard, participative supervisors allow team members to
express their own suggestions, actively listen to their ideas and use them to make
important decisions, thereby conveying the message that innovation-supportive
conducts are valued, prioritized and expected within that work unit. As a consequence,
team members are likely to self-regulate their behaviors accordingly, by collectively
contributing to sustain the production and implementation of new and useful ways of
doing things. Thus, we hypothesize:
H3a. Perceptions of supervisor’s participative leadership are positively related to
individual perceptions of group vision.
H3b. Perceptions of supervisor’s participative leadership are positively related to
individual perceptions of group support for innovation.

Group processes and psychological empowerment

The second central argument of our study is that individual perceptions of
group vision and group support for innovation will indirectly affect employees’
innovative endeavors by shaping proximal psychological processes. In this regard,
we identify psychological empowerment as a critical motivational state that is Linking
assumed to bridge the link between employees’ perceptions of group processes managerial
and individual innovativeness. Psychological empowerment reflects a proactive
orientation to one’s role, which is manifested in four interrelated cognitions (Thomas
practices and
and Velthouse, 1990; Spreitzer, 1995): meaning, which indicates a sense that one’s leadership style
work is personally valuable; competence, which refers to an individual’s belief
in his or her ability to effectively perform tasks; self-determination, or the sense 551
of freedom in the initiation and regulation of work behaviors; and impact, which
indicates one’s belief about the extent to which he or she significantly affects
work-related outcomes.
While theory and research on empowerment have identified a number of contextual
antecedents to individual empowerment in the workplace (for a review, see Seibert et al.,
2011), few empirical studies have paid attention to the role of employees’ perceptions
of team processes in affecting this psychological state. Yet, theoretically a case can
be made for linking psychological empowerment to group vision and group support
for innovation. First, clarity of team vision could represent a critical driver of
empowerment, in that it contributes to creating a sense of meaning and purpose and
drives individual initiative toward making and influencing decisions that are aligned
with the work units’ innovative objectives (Kanter, 1983; Conger and Kanungo, 1988).
Furthermore, when employees develop a shared vision, they tend to accept challenging
work-related goals (i.e. innovative goals) and to feel responsible for their attainment
(Kirkpatrick and Locke, 1996).
Additionally, by perceiving that extensive support for innovation is provided from
team members, employees would believe that their own innovative contributions
are valued and recognized by the group, thus experiencing the feeling that their work
is personally meaningful (Seibert et al., 2011). Furthermore, people working in a
perceived high innovation-supportive group expect team members to actively engage
in searching for new ideas and solutions (West, 1990). This will encourage personal
initiative and a self-determined approach to the work role. By recognizing that
resources and assistance are available within their team for idea development and
implementation, individuals will develop positive expectations for their innovative
efforts to bring about desired changes and improvements at work. This will be
associated with an increased sense of personal mastery and impact (Chiaburu and
Harrison, 2008). Accordingly, we hypothesize:
H4a. Individual perceptions of group vision are positively related to psychological
empowerment.
H4b. Individual perceptions of group support for innovation are positively related to
psychological empowerment.

Psychological empowerment and innovative work behavior

The third central argument of the present study is that employees who are
empowered by an innovation-supportive, vision-oriented team will direct their efforts
toward developing, promoting, and implementing innovative ideas at work. Both
empowerment and innovation literature have ascribed to psychological empowerment
a pivotal motivational role in fueling innovative work activities (e.g. Spreitzer, 1995;
Seibert et al., 2011), with most empirical studies providing evidence on the positive
impact of empowerment on individual creativity and innovation (e.g. Zhang and Bartol,
2010; Sun et al., 2012).
LODJ Psychologically empowered employees, indeed, believe that they are capable of
36,5 performing tasks successfully and of shaping work roles and contexts. These beliefs are
essential for stimulating individual engagement in relatively risky and unpredictable
activities, such as innovative performance. Furthermore, when individuals perceive that
their work is meaningful and valuable, they are more likely to expend extra-efforts in
creative and innovative activities, by seeking to understand a problem from various
552 perspectives and to connect multiple sources of information, which will then result in
higher levels of innovativeness (Gilson and Shalley, 2004; Sun et al., 2012). Finally, since
empowered employees express a sense of freedom and autonomy in carrying out their
tasks, they are expected to show a higher degree of personal initiative in proactively
generating and applying novel change-oriented ideas in the workplace (Alge et al., 2006).
Therefore, we propose:
H5. Psychological empowerment is positively related to individual engagement
in innovative work behaviors.

Method
Participants and procedure
This study was conducted in five companies in Italy, which had taken part in a broader
research-intervention project aimed at improving current human resource management
systems to enhance and support innovation processes in the workplace. The
organizations were in three industries (i.e. manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and
information technology services). Specifically, employees and work units in these firms
were exposed to continuous demands for innovation in products, procedures, and
techniques. Therefore innovation represented a core job requirement in the surveyed
organizations, at both the individual and the group level. With respect to job
description, all participants held professional or managerial positions. In this regard,
workers in pharmaceutical industries were mainly involved in the fabrication of new
medications, while those in manufacturing and information technology sectors were
mostly required to design and implement engineering or software products customized
to clients’ needs. In all the industry sectors, managers were mainly required to translate
the organization’s innovation-oriented strategies into specific team goals and to share
them with their followers. People in managerial positions were also demanded to
provide practical support to the individual and collective actions needed to achieve
team innovative outcomes.
In total, 443 Italian-speaking employees were invited to participate in the study
via an e-mail from the human resource management department. Participation was
voluntary, and respondents were assured of the anonymity of their responses. All
participants were requested to respond to a multi-section paper-and-pencil survey
and to return the completed questionnaire in a sealed envelope to a box in the ward
conference room. After explaining the purpose of the survey, a member of the
research team, assisted by an HR manager in each company, distributed the
questionnaires, which were administered during working hours to groups of
20-30 participants at a time. A total of 407 questionnaires were returned, 13 of which
were unusable because of incomplete information. The final sample hence comprised
394 Italian participants in 40 teams (each composed of five to 12 employees), which
resulted in a final response rate of 88.9 percent. In total, 165 of the participants were
female and 229 were male. Most participants were aged between 36 and 45 years
(39.2 percent) and had an undergraduate degree (43.1 percent).
Measures Linking
Perceptions of teamwork. Employees’ perceptions of teamwork were assessed with managerial
Boon’s (2008) four-item scale, which measures the extent to which employees see
themselves as part of a team rather than individual decision makers and are actively
practices and
involved in teamwork activities (α ¼ 0.75). The four items were “The organization leadership style
offers me the possibility to work closely together with my colleagues,” “The
organization offers me the possibility to work in a team,” “The organization offers 553
me the possibility to make decisions as a team,” and “The organization offers the
possibility for my team to take the responsibility for our results.” The content of the
items is hence representative of the concept of perceptions of teamwork upon which
this study was based. Respondents answered on a Likert scale ranging from 1
(“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”).
Perceptions of information sharing within the organization. This variable was
measured with a six-item scale developed by Boselie et al. (2000), which assesses the
extent to which employees have access to a wide variety of information regarding core
aspects of their organization (α ¼ 0.90). The six items were: “I am well informed on the
vision and mission of the company,” “I am well on the future plans of the company,”
“I am well informed on the business results of the company,” “I am well informed on the
full service package of the company,” “I am well informed on the activities of other
establishments and units of the company,” and “I am well informed on the service
standards of the company.” The content of these items is therefore assumed to
adequately reflect the conceptualization of perceptions of information sharing that was
adopted in the present study. All responses were rated on a scale ranging from 1
(“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”).
Perceptions of supervisor’s participative leadership. Individual perceptions of this
leadership style were measured with the participative decision-making subscale from
the empowering leadership questionnaire developed by Arnold et al. (2000), which
comprises six items and assesses the extent to which immediate supervisors use
team members’ information and input in making decisions, by enacting a range of
participation-supportive behaviors (α ¼ 0.89). Responses to all items ranged from 1
(“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”). A sample item is “My direct supervisor
encourages work group members to express ideas/suggestions.”
Individual perceptions of group processes. Employee’s perceptions of group vision
and group support for innovation were measured with two scales drawn from the
short version of Anderson and West’s (1998) Team Climate Inventory (Kivimäki and
Elovainio, 1999). In particular, we measured group vision with four items, which
assess the extent to which team members are clear about their work-related goals
and perceive them to be meaningful (α ¼ 0.85). An example is “How clear are you
about what your team objectives are?” All items were rated on a scale ranging from 1
(“not at all”) to 5 (“to a great deal”). Group support for innovation was measured with
three items, which assess the amount of perceived team support given toward
members’ attempts to develop and implement new and useful ideas (α ¼ 0.83). Using
a five-point scale ranging from “never to always,” participants were asked to rate
items such as “People in this team are always searching for fresh, new ways of
looking at problems.”
Psychological empowerment. Psychological empowerment was measured with
Spreitzer’s (1995) 12-item scale, which assessed four interrelated dimensions: meaning
(three items, α ¼ 0.81), competence (three items, α ¼ 0.78), self-determination (three
LODJ items, α ¼ 0.87), and impact (three items, α ¼ 0.77). The fit indices for the four
36,5 first-order factors plus one second-order factor yielded a good fit (χ2(50) ¼ 158.06,
CFI ¼ 0.95, RMSEA ¼ 0.07, SRMR ¼ 0.05), which, consistent with extant theory (Spreitzer,
1995) and research (Seibert et al., 2011; Zhang and Bartol, 2010), indicates that
psychological empowerment formed a second-order construct, made up of four dimensions.
Respondents answered on a five-point scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to
554 “strongly agree.”
Innovative work behavior. Innovative work behavior was assessed using a nine-item
scale developed by Janssen (2000). Sample items include “Creating new ideas for
difficult issues,” “Making support for innovative ideas,” and “Transforming innovative
ideas into useful applications” (α ¼ 0.92). Employees were asked to indicate how often
they engaged in these innovative behaviors during their daily work activities.
Responses to items ranged from 1 (“never”) to 5 (“always”).
Control variables. Consistent with prior research on individual-level innovation
(Hammond et al., 2011; West and Farr, 1990), we controlled for three demographic
characteristics that are likely to be significantly associated with innovative
behavior: age, in that older employees have additional resources that help them
develop and implement new and useful ideas (e.g. Binnewies et al., 2008); educational
level and organizational tenure, which reflect higher domain-relevant expertise and
knowledge that are expected to result in higher innovativeness (Oldham and
Cummings, 1996).

Results
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)
Prior to testing hypotheses, a CFA was conducted with maximum likelihood estimation
procedure of MPlus, version 6.1 (Muthén and Muthén, 1998-2010), on the seven
variables examined: teamwork, information sharing, participative leadership, group
vision, group support for innovation, psychological empowerment, and innovative
work behavior[3]. We therefore tested and compared a series of nested models using χ2
difference tests. As expected, the hypothesized seven-factor model yielded a good fit: χ2
(1012) ¼ 2,126.62; CFI ¼ 0.90; RMSEA ¼ 0.05; SRMR ¼ 0.06. Furthermore, as can be
seen from Table I, the hypothesized model exhibited a better fit to the data than
alternative, more parsimonious models ( p o 0.01), thereby providing evidence of the
distinctiveness of the study’s variables.

Model χ2 df Δχ2 Δdf CFI RMSEA SRMR

Hypothesized seven-factor model 2,126.62 1,012 – – 0.90 0.05 0.06

Six-factor models
Combining VI and SI 3,046.64 1,022 920.02* 10 0.81 0.07 0.07
Combining PE and IWB 3,401.92 1,022 1,275.30* 10 0.77 0.08 0.08
One-factor model 6,200.22 1,037 4,073.60* 25 0.51 0.11 0.10
Table I. Notes: CFI, comparative fit index; RMSEA, root-mean-square error of approximation; SRMR, standardized
Fit indices for root-mean-square residual; Δχ2, χ2 difference tests between the seven-factor model and alternative
confirmatory factor models; VI, group vision; SI, group support for innovation; PE, psychological empowerment; IWB,
analysis innovative work behavior. n ¼ 394. *po0.01
Assessment of common method variance Linking
Because responses to all items were collected from the same source at the same time, managerial
relationships among study variables could be inflated by common method bias.
Consistent with Podsakoff et al.’s (2003) statistical recommendations, we therefore
practices and
added a common method factor to the hypothesized seven-factor model in order to leadership style
estimate the amount of variance accounted for by this unmeasured method factor.
The model exhibited a good fit, which was also significantly better than that of the 555
hypothesized model: χ2 (833) ¼ 1498.48; Δχ2 (179) ¼ 628.14; p o 0.01; CFI ¼ 0.94;
RMSEA ¼ 0.05; SRMR ¼ 0.04. Yet, the method factor accounted for 24 percent of total
variance, which is slightly below the average portion of variance (26 percent) reported
in self-report studies (Williams et al., 1989; Podsakoff et al., 2003). This result suggests
that, although common method bias exists, it may not be pervasive in altering our
study results. Table II reports the descriptive statistics and correlations for all the
variables.

Hypothesis testing
Due to the nested nature of our data, it was meaningful to assess whether the individual
scores of contextual variables (i.e. teamwork, information sharing, and participative
leadership) and team factors (i.e. group vision and group support for innovation) could
be aggregated at the organizational and team level, respectively. We addressed this
issue by calculating the following statistics: the rwg(j) index, which “compares the
observed within-group variability to the within-unit variability expected from a
hypothetical distribution – that is, an expected variance”, the ICC(1), which estimates
the proportion of variance between participants that can be explained by group
membership and the ICC(2), which provides an estimate of the aggregated participative
leadership scores. Results indicated that the ICC(1) and ICC(2) were fairly below the
recommended benchmarks of 0.12 for ICC(1), and of 0.47 for ICC(2) (Schneider et al.,
1998), at both the organizational and group level. Likewise, the mean rwg(j) values were
below 0.70, indicating a low agreement among members within the organization and
the group (Bliese, 2000)[4]. These results hence suggest that it is not necessary to
aggregate the individual scores of contextual and team factors at either the
organizational or group level. Our hypotheses were therefore tested at the individual
level of analysis. However, the findings also indicate that some amount of within-group
agreement was still present among individuals about contextual and team factors. This
is in accordance with our theoretical model, which assumes that certain shared
psychological processes are responsible for conveying the effects of distal
organizational and group antecedents to individual psychological empowerment and
innovative work behavior[5].
In order to examine the theoretical model, we performed structural equation models
(SEM), which allow investigation of multiple predictive relationships among latent
variables (Holmbeck, 1997). SEM also offers the advantage of first, controlling for
measurement errors when the relationships among variables are analyzed (Hoyle and
Smith, 1994), and second, comparing the goodness-of-fit of the hypothesized model with
that of alternative models (Cheung and Lau, 2008). We assessed the hypothesized
relationships through a series of nested model comparisons. Our theorized model was
a full-mediation model, which, consistent with H1-H5, specified the following paths: a
direct path from teamwork, information sharing, and participative leadership to group
processes (i.e. group vision and group support for innovation); a direct path from group
processes to psychological empowerment; and a direct path from psychological
 36,5

556
LODJ

Table II.

and correlations
Descriptive statistics
Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1. Age 3.05 0.91 –

2. Education 3.24 0.91 –0.29** –
3. Organizational tenure 2.08 0.83 0.41** –0.27** –
4. Teamwork 3.51 0.89 −0.00 0.09 –0.05 (0.75)
5. Information sharing 2.84 1.02 −0.00 0.13* 0.03 0.41** (0.90)
6. Participative leadership 3.46 1.02 −0.07 0.01 0.09 0.50** 0.43** (0.89)
7. Group vision 3.87 0.88 −0.01 0.03 0.01 0.46** 0.53** 0.45** (0.85)
8. Group support for innovation 3.09 1.01 0.05 0.01 −0.03 0.54** 0.44** 0.55** 0.51** (0.83)
9. Psychological empowerment 3.77 0.68 0.11* −0.07 0.11* 0.42** 0.39** 0.49** 0.45** 0.49** (0.88)
10. Innovative work behavior 2.99 0.93 0.13* 0.04 0.06 0.35** 0.36** 0.41** 0.41*** 0.45** 0.58** (0.92)
Notes: Internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach’s α’s) appear across the diagonal in parentheses. For age: 1, less than 26 years; 2, between 26 and 35 years;
3, between 36 and 45 years; 4, between 46 and 55 years; 5, over 55 years. For education: 1, primary school; 2, secondary school; 3, undergraduate; 4, graduate; 5,
master. For organizational tenure: 1, less than 8 years; 2, between 8 and 14 years; 3, over 14 years. n ¼ 394. *p o 0.05; **p o0.01
empowerment to innovative work behavior. The results in Table III indicate that Linking
the theorized model (Model 1) fit the data reasonably well: χ2 (1,015) ¼ 2,038.89; managerial
CFI ¼ 0.90; RMSEA ¼ 0.05; SRMR ¼ 0.06. Additionally, all specified paths were
significant, which provides support to H1-H5. Conversely, innovative work
practices and
behavior was not significantly associated with either education ( β ¼ 0.08, ns) or leadership style
organizational tenure ( β ¼ 0.00, ns), but it had a positive relationship with age
( β ¼ 0.08, p o 0.05). 557
This model was then compared with two partial-mediation nested models, which
we assumed were theoretically plausible. First, we assessed the possibility that
participative leadership directly predicted psychological empowerment. Indeed, by
encouraging their followers to voice out their own opinions and using their suggestions
to make relevant decisions, participative leaders directly emphasize the
meaningfulness of the followers’ work and increase their feeling of control over their
immediate work environment. Therefore, a case could be made that participative
supervisors, beyond contributing to shaping an empowering, innovation-supportive
group environment, additionally enhance followers’ perceptions of psychological
empowerment. Accordingly, in the first alternative model (Model 2) we added a direct
path from participative leadership to psychological empowerment. The results in
Table III revealed that this model (Model 2) fit the data significantly better than the
hypothesized model: χ2 (1,015) ¼ 2,038.89; Δχ2 (1) ¼ 17.59; p o 0.01; CFI ¼ 0.90;
RMSEA ¼ 0.05; SRMR ¼ 0.06. Furthermore, while all the hypothesized paths
remained significant, the additional link between participative leadership and
psychological empowerment was statistically significant ( β ¼ 0.29, p o 0.01).
Second, we took into account the possibility that group support for innovation
would directly enhance innovative work behavior. Indeed, in a group environment
where assistance for idea generation and implementation is ready available, employees
are more likely to take the risk of suggesting new developed ideas or solutions as well
as to take advantage of their supportive team for introducing them within the work
context. Additionally, the provision of support to team members’ innovative efforts is
associated with the presence of shared norms for innovation, which are extensively
articulated and enacted by the group (King et al., 1991). Theory and research on group
dynamics suggest that group norms have the power to affect and regulate behaviors of

Model χ2 df Δχ2 Δdf CFI RMSEA SRMR

Model 1 (theorized) 2,038.89 1,015 21.81** 2 0.90 0.05 0.06

Model 2 (PL→PE) 2,021.30 1,014 4.22* 1 0.90 0.05 0.06
Model 3 (PL→PE, SI →IWB) 2,017.08 1,013 – – 0.90 0.05 0.06
Model 4 (PL→PE, SI→IWB, TW→PE) 2,014.81 1,012 2.27 1 0.90 0.05 0.06
Model 5 (PL→PE, SI→IWB, IS→PE) 2,015.52 1,012 1.56 1 0.90 0.05 0.06
Model 6 (PL→PE, SI→IWB, TW→IWB) 2,017.07 1,012 0.01 1 0.90 0.05 0.06
Model 7 (PL→PE, SI→IWB, PL→IWB) 2,017.04 1,012 0.04 1 0.90 0.05 0.06
Model 8 (PL→PE, SI→IWB, VI→IWB) 2,016.10 1,012 0.98 1 0.90 0.05 0.06
Notes: CFI, comparative fit index; RMSEA, root-mean-square error of approximation; SRMR,
standardized root-mean-square residual; Δχ2, χ2 difference tests between the best-fitting model (Model
3) and alternative models; TW, teamwork; IS, information sharing; PL, participative leadership; VI, Table III.
group vision; SI, group support for innovation; PE, psychological empowerment; IWB, innovative work Fit indices for nested
behavior. n ¼ 394. *p o 0.05; **p o0.01 structural models
LODJ group members by inducing consensual expectancies about appropriate conducts
36,5 (Asch, 1956). It is hence plausible to expect group support for innovation to directly
nurture team members’ innovative endeavors, beyond affecting their psychological
states. Therefore, in the second alternative model (Model 3) a path from group support
for innovation to innovative behavior was added to those specified by Model 2. This
model provided an adequate fit to the data, which was further significantly better than
558 that of Model 2: χ2 (1,015) ¼ 2,017.08; Δχ 2 (1) ¼ 4.22; p o 0.05; CFI ¼ 0.90;
RMSEA ¼ 0.05; SRMR ¼ 0.06. Importantly, the direct relationship between group
support for innovation and innovative behavior was significant (β ¼ 0.14, p o 0.01), and
all previously specified links also remained significantly related.
To assess whether Model 3 was the best representation of the data, we compared its
fit to that of other partial-mediation models containing additional direct paths,
precisely: teamwork→psychological empowerment (Model 4); information
sharing→psychological empowerment (Model 5); teamwork→innovative work
behavior (Model 6); participative leadership→innovative work behavior (Model 7);
and a path from vision to innovative work behavior (Model). As can be seen from
Table III, χ2 difference tests revealed that none of these models significantly improved
over Model 3. Furthermore, none of the additional direct paths were significant, which
supported the hypothesized chain mediating process. Accordingly, on the basis
of the principle of parsimony, we retained Model 3, which was the best-fitting, most
parsimonious model. Overall, this model accounted for 49 percent of the variance
in innovative work behavior, for 50 percent of variance in both psychological
empowerment and group vision, and for 59 percent of variance in group support for
innovation. Completely standardized path coefficients for Model 3 are depicted in
Figure 2.
Finally, to further estimate the links among various mediating variables, we
conducted the joint significant test, which has been shown to provide an optimal
balance of statistical power and type I error (MacKinnon et al., 2002). We further
provided confidence intervals (95 percent) to determine the significance of the indirect
effects (MacKinnon et al., 2004).
As shown in Table IV, results indicated that group vision and group support for
innovation significantly mediated the relationship between teamwork, information
sharing and participative leadership, on one hand, and psychological empowerment, on
the other, except that the path from information sharing to psychological
empowerment via group support for innovation was not statistically significant.

Teamwork 0.46**

0.32** Group 0.14*

support for
innovation
0.14* 0.26** Innovative
Information Psychological 0.60**
work
sharing 0.38** empowerment
behavior
0.29**
Group vision
Figure 2. 0.29**
0.14*
Completely Participative 0.29**
standardized path leadership
coefficients for
Model 3 Notes: *p < 0.05; **p< 0.01
Variable Indirect effect 95% confidence interval
Linking
managerial
Group processes as mediator practices and
TW→SI→PE 0.09* [0.02, 0.16]
TW→VI→PE 0.08** [0.03, 0.12] leadership style
IS→SI→PE 0.03 [0.00, 0.03]
IS→VI→PE 0.09** [0.05, 0.14]
PL→SI→PE 0.08* [0.03, 0.12] 559
PL→VI→PE 0.04* [0.01, 0.07]
TW→SI→IWB 0.07 [0.00, 0.13]
IS→SI→IWB 0.02 [0.00, 0.04]
PL→SI→IWB 0.04 [0.00, 0.08]
Psychological empowerment as mediator
SI→PE→IWB 0.16** [0.07, 0.23]
VI→PE→IWB 0.16** [0.07, 0.21] Table IV.
PL→PE→IWB 0.16** [0.09, 0.24] Results of the
Notes: TW, teamwork; IS, information sharing; PL, participative leadership; VI, group vision; product of
SI, group support for innovation; PE, psychological empowerment; IWB, innovative work behavior. coefficients test
*p o0.05; **p o0.01 on indirect effects

Both group processes also indirectly affected innovative behavior through the mediation
of psychological empowerment. Furthermore, as previously remarked, the final model
(Model 3) included two extra direct paths that were found to be significant, namely, the
path α from participative leadership to psychological empowerment and the path β from
group support for innovation to innovative behavior. It was therefore reasonable to
calculate four additional indirect effects to assess the relationship between participative
leadership and innovative behavior via psychological empowerment as well as the effect
of contextual variables on innovative behavior via group support for innovation:
participative leadership → psychological empowerment → innovative behavior;
teamwork → group support for innovation → innovative behavior; information
sharing → group support for innovation → innovative behavior; participative
leadership → group support for innovation → innovative behavior. As can be seen
from Table IV, while psychological empowerment significantly mediated the relationship
between participative leadership and innovative behavior, none of the links between
contextual variables and innovative behavior were significantly mediated by group
support for innovation[6].

Discussion
The present study is one of the first attempts to test a conceptual model that links
perceptions of managerial practices and leadership style to individual innovative
performance through the chain mediating role of individual-level group and
psychological processes. First, results from SEM reveal that teamwork, information
sharing and participative leadership can effectively contribute to shaping team vision
and team support for innovation. Accordingly, our study adds to the innovation
literature by extending current knowledge on the role exerted by contextual factors in
enhancing innovation-supportive group processes. Indeed, past research has widely
disregarded the role of teamwork and information sharing in predicting group
variables that are highly conducive to successful innovative outcomes.
LODJ By bridging these research gaps, our results uniquely indicate that when employees
36,5 perceive to be involved in cooperative, interdependent, and coordinated teamwork
activities and processes, they are more inclined to develop a shared, meaningful vision
as well as to collectively engage in purposive innovation-supportive courses of actions.
Moreover, our findings suggest that when receiving extensive communication about
the firms’ goals, strategic plans, and other information regarding core organizational
560 activities, employees are more likely to share and acquire relevant knowledge in
order to converge toward group goals, as well as to propose, evaluate, and support
new and potentially useful ideas. These findings, thus, contribute to broadening our
understanding of the role of perceived teamwork and information sharing in shaping
those perceptions of group dynamics that are likely to drive and nurture individuals’
innovative efforts.
Furthermore, past research has not taken into consideration the specific
contribution of participative leaders to foster individual perceptions of team
commitment to a shared vision and to shape a group environment that is open to
change and innovation. Conversely, our study specifically addresses this issue and
empirically demonstrates that, by encouraging team members to voice out their own
ideas, confronting them with a variety of information and using their suggestions for
making relevant decisions, participative supervisors set the stage for employees’
participation in defining convergent, worthwhile goals, and further enhance their
involvement in sustaining innovative efforts. Thus, not only does our research extend
current knowledge on the role of managerial practices in fostering perceived
innovation-oriented group processes, but it also answers calls to deserve further
attention on the impact of leadership on team factors that lead to effective innovative
performances (Burke et al., 2006). Taken together, these findings additionally support
processual models of innovative performance that stress the role of distal situational
factors in enhancing perceived innovation-oriented team dynamics (Woodman et al.,
1993). In particular, our study contributes to strengthen the validity of the input-
process-output model (Salas et al., 2004), since it identifies a range of input contextual
variables (i.e. teamwork, information sharing, and participative leadership) as critical
prerequisites for establishing worthwhile group processes that are conducive to
successful innovative outcomes.
The present study also contributes to empowerment literature, by providing support
for the mediating role of individual-level team vision and team support for innovation in
the relationship between contextual practices and psychological empowerment. Thus,
our results provide further insights on group mechanisms that are likely to translate the
beneficial effects of an empowering organizational environment on employees’ proactive
orientation in the workplace. In this sense, our research is unique in explicating the
indirect relationship between teamwork environment, information sharing, participative
leadership, and psychological empowerment, considering that empirical evidence of the
intervening function of perceived innovation-supportive group dynamics was missing
(Seibert et al., 2011). Indeed, our findings indicate that the possibility for team members
to work together for performing tasks, to have access to a variety of information and to
be confronted with a leader who prizes their contribution in decision-making processes
would serve as a valuable contextual input for ensuring employees’ commitment to clear
group goals and extensive support to innovative endeavors, which are in turn essential to
nurture individuals’ psychological empowerment.
Moreover, our findings indicate that, while team vision and team support for
innovation mediated the relationship between the three contextual practices and
psychological empowerment, the indirect link between these distal antecedents and Linking
innovative behavior via group processes was not supported. This result suggests that managerial
psychological empowerment represents a critical mechanism that ensures the
effectiveness of managerial practices and participative leader behaviors on
practices and
individual engagement in innovative endeavors. leadership style
Finally, psychological empowerment constitutes the mechanism that links
individual-level team vision and team support for innovation to employees’ innovative 561
behavior, despite the latter being also directly predicted by group support. In this regard,
while past research has mainly focussed on the direct relationship between team
processes and creative or innovative performance (e.g. Curral et al., 2001; Somech, 2006;
Tjosvold et al., 2004), our study sheds further light on the psychological processes
underlying the impact of perceived innovation-supportive group factors on individual
innovativeness. Additionally, our findings further contribute to innovative behavior
literature by demonstrating for the first time that participative leadership indirectly
affects innovative performance by shaping psychological empowerment. In this respect,
our study further supports recent research findings emphasizing the pivotal role of this
motivational state in mediating the impact of empowering leadership styles on individual
innovation (Zhang and Bartol, 2010; Sun et al., 2012).

Limitations and future research directions

We recognize some limitations in this study that need to be addressed in future
research. First, since all data were collected from the same source through self-report
measures, the observed relationships among our study variables could be inflated.
Measures of innovative performance should thus comprise either supervisory or
co-worker ratings, as well as objective indicators in future studies. However, we
inspected whether the observed relationships among our study variables were likely to
result from common method bias by following Podsakoff et al.’s (2003) statistical
recommendations. Results demonstrated that the amount of variance explained by the
unmeasured method factor was lower than 26 percent, which suggests that, although
common method bias was in part present in this study, it was unlikely to seriously
invalidate our research findings. Additionally, in the case of innovative work behavior,
the use of other-reports may not necessarily prove suitable. This is because employees
have more information about the backgrounds of their work activities (Janssen, 2000),
as well as about the extent to which they have developed or proposed their ideas to
others in the organization. Moreover, supervisors or other organizational members may
fail to capture some of their colleagues’ ideas, by noticing only those acts intended to
impress them. Research has also shown that self-report ratings of innovation-related
behaviors are consistent with supervisor scores of innovative performance (e.g.
Janssen, 2000) as well as with firm-level outcomes, such as performance and innovation.
Consistent with these theoretical and empirical evidences, scholars have further
indicated that relationships among constructs using different methods tend to be less
accurate than same-method correlations (Conway and Lance, 2010; Lance et al., 2010).
Accordingly, on the basis of these premises, it is reasonable to suggest that the use of
self-report rating of innovative work behavior was not invalid in our study.
Second, although there is consistent conceptual and empirical support for our chain
mediation model, the cross-sectional nature of our research design does not allow us to
draw any inferences about causality. Addressing this limitation is particularly worthy,
considering that empirical evidences suggest that the direction of the relationships
between some of the study variables might be opposite to what our research model
LODJ predicted. For example, in a study on product and process innovation teams, Pearce
36,5 and Ensley (2004) showed that group vision and innovative performance were
reciprocally related to one another. This hence suggests that innovative activities may
not only be shaped by team vision, but it might also promote positive perceptions of the
group’s innovative goals. Likewise, shared group vision has been demonstrated to
improve important teamwork processes, such as team cohesion and intragroup
562 collaboration (Revilla and Rodriguez, 2011). Accordingly, teamwork might represent
both an antecedent and an outcome of team vision In the same way, there are some
evidence indicating reverse and reciprocal causation in the relationship between
psychological empowerment and employees behaviors (Boudrias et al., 2014), as well as
between empowerment and leadership (Van Dierendonck and Dijkstra, 2012). Overall,
hence, these findings points to the importance of conducting longitudinal designs in
future research, in order to shed further light on the causal status of the relationships
examined in our study.
Another issue that warrants further consideration is the fact that innovation-
supportive group processes and psychological empowerment might be nurtured by
situational factors other than the ones we have identified in our research. For example, it
would be interesting to assess the impact of work-design characteristics like job
autonomy and task variety on team vision, team support for innovation, and
psychological empowerment. Indeed, the possibility to discretionarily decide how to
carry out work activities would increase the team’s sense of control and responsibility,
which is essential to ensure collective commitment to group strategic goals. By attending
to multiple, diversified tasks within their unit, team members can further gain clearer
understanding of group requirements and eventual problems associated to various
activities. Accordingly, they would be more disposed to collectively support active
exploration and implementation of new and useful solutions that would allow their
group to better deal with difficult demands. Additionally, enriching job characteristics,
such as autonomy and task variety, also have power to increase the experience of
meaningfulness of the work, as well as to enhance the feelings of competence,
self-determination, and responsibility (Gagné et al., 1997; Seibert et al., 2011). As such,
these contextual variables are essential to develop high psychologically empowered
employees. These premises, thus, highlight the importance for future research to examine
how enriching task design characteristics may stimulate an innovation-oriented group
environment and an improved sense of psychological empowerment.

Practical implications
Our findings identify several critical factors that would help management to shape goal-
oriented and innovation-supportive teams. First, our study suggests that firms and their
managers should actively promote teamwork activities by creating those structural
conditions that enable interdependent, cooperative, and coordinated activities among
group members. These conditions would thus increase the likelihood that team members
will be committed to challenging goals and will be engaged in providing mutual help and
assistance to idea development and implementation.
Second, by highlighting the positive relationship between information sharing and
group vision and group support for innovation, our results indicate that teams are more
likely to define coherent and meaningful goals and to be collectively involved in
innovative endeavors to meet organizational targets when they gain clear
understanding of the firm’s mission, strategic policies and procedures. Accordingly,
our study suggests that managers should introduce effective communication systems
to ensure widespread diffusion of critical knowledge and information, which motivates Linking
and gears group efforts to support and nurture innovative processes. managerial
Finally, our study ascribes participative leaders a pivotal role in both enhancing
innovation-oriented group dynamics and shaping employees’ psychological
practices and
empowerment. These findings therefore call on management to plan and activate leadership style
specific leadership training programs that focus on improving listening and
communication skills, negotiation abilities, and supportive behaviors. These 563
practices would enable supervisors to create a participative environment in which
followers collaboratively contribute to defining shared goals, are ready to support new
ideas and feel personally empowered to engage in innovative endeavors.
Notes
1. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.
2. Note that we focus on individual rather than on shared perceptions of contextual factors and
group processes. Our choice is indeed driven by the cognitive schema approach to the work
context, which suggests that people respond primarily to the situation they perceive and,
consequently, their motivational states (i.e. psychological empowerment) and behaviors
(i.e. innovative work behaviors) are more strongly affected by the individual perceptions of
their immediate environment than by shared perceptions (Barrick et al., 2013; Endler and
Magnusson, 1976; James and Sells, 1981). Consistent with these assumptions, several studies
have treated contextual factors and group processes as individual-level constructs
when examining their relationships with motivational factors and innovative performance
(e.g. Scott and Bruce, 1994; Wong et al., 2007; Yuan and Woodman, 2010; Thompson and
Heron, 2006).
3. Note that when performing both CFA and subsequent structural equation models, all of the
individual items of the scales were used as manifest indicators of their latent constructs.
4. Aggregation indices of measures assessing perceptions of contextual factors and group
processes: teamwork, ICC(1) ¼ 0.06, ICC(2) ¼ 0.24, rwg(j) ¼ 0.40; information sharing, ICC
(1) ¼ 0.04, ICC(2) ¼ 0.37, rwg(j) ¼ 0.39; participative leadership, ICC(1) ¼ 0.05, ICC(2) ¼ 0.36,
rwg(j) ¼ 0.61; vision, ICC(1) ¼ 0.08, ICC(2) ¼ 0.27, rwg(j) ¼ 0.57; team support for innovation,
ICC(1) ¼ 0.03, ICC(2) ¼ 0.35, rwg(j) ¼ 0.64.
5. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.
6. Note that, building on our theoretical predictions, an anonymous reviewer suggested that
the impact of teamwork, information sharing, participative leadership, and team vision on
employee innovative behavior through the mediation of psychological empowerment might
be contingent upon employees agreeing that innovation is an expected requirement of their
job. Because team support for innovation reflects perceived expectations for innovation,
it was hence meaningful to assess whether this variable could positively moderate the
above mentioned indirect relationships. Consistent with Preacher et al.’s (2007) statistical
recommendations, we therefore examined whether the indirect effect of teamwork,
information sharing, participative leadership, and team vision on innovative behavior
significantly differ at high and low levels of team support for innovation. However,
when we compared the mediated effects at high and low levels of team support for
innovation, the moderating effects were not significant: for teamwork → psychological
empowerment → innovative work behavior, index of moderated mediation ¼ −0.03, ns; for
information sharing → psychological empowerment → innovative work behavior, index of
moderated mediation ¼ −0.01, ns; for participative leadership → psychological
empowerment → innovative work behavior, index of moderated mediation ¼ −0.04, ns; for
vision → psychological empowerment → innovative work behavior, index of moderated
mediation ¼ 0.00, ns.
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Further reading
Chen, G. and Kanfer, R. (2006), “Toward a systems theory of motivated behavior in work teams”,
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Portoghese, I., Galletta, M., Battistelli, A., Saiani, L., Penna, M.P. and Allegrini, E. (2012), Linking
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Van de Ven, A. (1986), “Central problems in the management of innovation”, Management
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About the authors
Professor Carlo Odoardi is an Associate Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at the
569
University of Florence. After earning his PhD in industrial psychology at the University of Bologna
(Italy), he spent 15 years working in the human resource management area of public and private
sectors. His research interests involve organizational change and innovation, entrepreneurship
processes at work, training systems, work motivation, and career orientation. Professor Carlo Odoardi
is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: carlo.odoardi@unifi.it
Francesco Montani is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Psychology at the University
of Sherbrooke. He earned his PhD in organizational psychology at the University of Verona, Italy.
His current research interests embrace innovative work behavior in the workplace, employee
mindfulness, regulatory motivational processes, and human resource management practices.
Jean-Sébastien Boudrias is an Associate Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at
the University of Montréal. He earned his PhD in work and organizational psychology at the
University of Montréal. His research interests include employee empowerment, personality,
individual psychological assessment, and psychological health at work.
Professor Adalgisa Battistelli is a Full Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at
the Laboratory of Psychology, Health and Quality of Life EA 4139, University of Bordeaux,
Montpellier. She earned her PhD in work and organizational psychology at the University of
Bologna, Italy. Her research interests include change and innovation processes in the workplace,
work motivation, entrepreneurship, and training systems.

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