TY - JOUR
T1 - TOO MUCH ON THE PLATE? HOW EXECUTIVE JOB DEMANDS HARM FIRM INNOVATION AND REDUCE SHARE OF EXPLORATORY INNOVATIONS
AU - Zhu, David H.
AU - Jia, Liangding
AU - Li, Fei
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Olenka Kacperczyk, Donald Lange, Razvan Lungeanu, Matthew Semadeni, Wei Shen, Jane Yan Jiang, Fangmei Lu, Associate Editor Zeki Simsek, the three anonymous reviewers, and seminar participants at Hong Kong Baptist University, CEIBS, Fudan University, Tongji University, and Shanghai University for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. This study received financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (project No. 71632005). The first author completed a substantial amount of work on this project during his sabbatical and summer appointments at Fudan University.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved.
PY - 2022/4
Y1 - 2022/4
N2 - Building on psychological research on job demands and executive job demands theory, we explain why executive job demands negatively influence a firm’s overall innovation and shift the balance of innovative activities toward a larger share of exploitative innovations at the expense of exploratory innovations, leading to a smaller share of innovations that are exploratory. In addition, we explain how variety in executives’ gender, age, and tenure and an innovative climate weaken the negative effects of job demands on both overall innovation and the share of exploratory innovations. Our theory suggests that a controlling climate and employees’ education weaken the negative effect of job demands on overall innovation but exacerbate the negative effect of job demands on the share of exploratory innovations. Using surveys collected on-site from 243 Chinese firms, we find support for five of our 10 hypotheses and marginal support for three additional hypotheses but no support for the two moderating effects of innovative climate. This study shifts innovation scholars’ attention away from executive cognition and characteristics to their job environment attributes. It also develops executive job demands theory by examining its boundaries and applicability to the domain of innovation management.
AB - Building on psychological research on job demands and executive job demands theory, we explain why executive job demands negatively influence a firm’s overall innovation and shift the balance of innovative activities toward a larger share of exploitative innovations at the expense of exploratory innovations, leading to a smaller share of innovations that are exploratory. In addition, we explain how variety in executives’ gender, age, and tenure and an innovative climate weaken the negative effects of job demands on both overall innovation and the share of exploratory innovations. Our theory suggests that a controlling climate and employees’ education weaken the negative effect of job demands on overall innovation but exacerbate the negative effect of job demands on the share of exploratory innovations. Using surveys collected on-site from 243 Chinese firms, we find support for five of our 10 hypotheses and marginal support for three additional hypotheses but no support for the two moderating effects of innovative climate. This study shifts innovation scholars’ attention away from executive cognition and characteristics to their job environment attributes. It also develops executive job demands theory by examining its boundaries and applicability to the domain of innovation management.
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U2 - 10.5465/AMJ.2019.0334
DO - 10.5465/AMJ.2019.0334
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85104357901
SN - 0001-4273
VL - 65
SP - 606
EP - 633
JO - Academy of Management Journal
JF - Academy of Management Journal
IS - 2
ER -