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Is coworker feedback more important than supervisor feedback for increasing innovative behavior?

Nathan Eva¹; Hannah Meacham¹; Alexander Newman²; Gary Schwarz³; Tse Leng Tham⁴

¹ Department of Management, Monash Business School Caulfield Victoria Australia · ² Deakin Business School Deakin University Burwood New South Wales Australia · ³ School of Finance and Management SOAS University of London London UK · ⁴ College of Business RMIT University Melbourne Victoria Australia

A growing body of research explores human resource management practices that encourage employees to innovate. In this study, we examine the links between different sources of feedback (supervisor and coworker) and employees’ innovative behavior. Drawing on social exchange theory and the job demands‐resources theory, we first propose that work engagement and psychological contract breach mediate the relationship between supervisor feedback and employees’ innovative behavior. Second, we propose a moderated mediation model in which coworker feedback attenuates the relationships between supervisor feedback and employees’ innovative behavior through the mediating mechanisms of both work engagement and psychological contract breach. Using three waves of multisource data from 300 Chinese employees and their 64 supervisors, we found a dual‐mediation pathway by which employees’ work engagement and perceptions of psychological contract breach mediate the influence of supervisor feedback on innovative behavior. Our results also show that coworker feedback can be used to supplement the lack of supervisor feedback when required. Organizations are advised to ensure that employees obtain regular feedback from multiple sources because such feedback can promote employees’ work engagement and perceptions that the organization is upholding its side of the psychological contract, which fosters employees’ innovative behavior.

DOI

10.1002/hrm.21960

Volume

58 (4)

Pages

383-396

Language

en

Export

BibTeX

Sources

crossref