The Employment Relationship and Innovative Work Behaviour

In this dissertation the relation between the employment relationship and the Innovative Work Behaviour (IWB) is treated. As employees contribute significantly to innovation companies, research tries to identify the triggers and obstacles for employee innovative behaviour. Few studies here focused on the effect of the employment relationship. In this dissertation the focus lies on the relation of job insecurity, performance-related pay and time flexibility with the innovative behaviour of employees.Through a series of six articles we discuss the Innovative Work Behaviour concept, map its relevance and study the relation with the employment relationship. In doing so, we take into account the effects of job design variables such as job autonomy. This dissertation reveals that the studied employment relationship variables stand in a weak and sometimes complex relation with Innovative Work Behaviour. For job insecurity the relations is negative and significant, but limited in scope in comparison with, e.g., the relation of job autonomy with IWB. For performance-related pay (PRP) we distinguish between individual and collective PRP. No main effects are identified for individual PRP but individual PRP significantly interacted with job autonomy in their relation with IWB. Collective PRP is positively related with IWB and the effect is inflated in certain organisation contexts. For flexi-time, the observed bivariate relation with IWB was completely accounted for by the job method autonomy variable. We conclude that the employment relationship has complex, uncertain and relatively weak relations with the innovative behaviour of employees. Job autonomy, on the other hand, is clearly positively related to IWB. These conclusions signal that changing employment relationship variables is no guarantee for beneficial employee behaviour. In order to change employee behaviour, one must focus on the job content and structure.status: publishe