Enhancing employee innovativeness and job performance through a culture of workplace innovation

Purpose - The creative employees with innovative ideas tend to engage with the latest technologies and the needed organizational processes for the survival of the companies. The culture of workplace innovation (WIP) causes, strengthens, sustains and incentivizes employee performance to enhance employee innovativeness. This paper explores as to what employees perceive on and how to go about WPI; the study of the perception of knowledge professionals about nature, extent, the association and the outcomes of workplace innovation, therefore, assumes importance. Design/methodology/approach - Knowledge professionals were surveyed to collect data regarding workplace innovation. And 481 collected responses were analyzed to infer the results and employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to validate the proposed research model. The results of the reliability and validity tests show that the proposed model has satisfactory psychometric properties. Findings - The present study looked into how culture facilitates WPI and enhances employee innovativeness and performance. The level of trust between employees and organizations has to be very high, and the organization has to have a close-knit working environment to ensure that organizations remain in the market retaining their market standing. This is so particularly in the context of today's global scenario where organizations have access to technologies, and technologies have changed the way we live, consume and meet people. The success of an organization depends on the culture of the organization. Research limitations/implications - The study has certain constraints. Foremost, the sample collected comprises a good percentage of entry and middle managerial level employees while the proportion of senior managerial level employees is relatively less. In a way, it represents the actual population, as in general, the senior managers make a very less percentage in information technology (IT) organizations. Practical implications - To accomplish the goal of marinating high performing and innovative organizational workforce, the policymakers and the management of organizations should adopt an employee-centric approach by employing nontechnical innovation at the workplace, namely WPI. The results of this study pronounce the same. The more favorable the culture of an organization, the more likely the employee thrives and continues in it. Hence, the major step from the employer side could be to develop and maintain a supportive and constructive organizational culture. Originality/value - The value of this original research lies in the understanding of the literature reviewed that it is the first survey of its kind done in India, and it helps the Indian IT organizations and knowledge professionals to understand that the WPI enhances employee innovativeness and job performance.