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may have better opportunities to generate ideas due to frequent external contacts in their daily work (for instance, sales representatives). A typical quote here is:
Having frequent contact with employees from other firms is helpful. Most of my younger people are still involved in a part-time education program for accountants. They have frequent contacts with the Accountancy Society. It is a good thing to meet other accountants and see how they do their work. I notice that it sparks new ideas in them.These factors suggest that future research needs to explore the role that contingencies play in the relationship between leadership and employees’ idea generation and
application behaviour. Moderators for some of these leader behaviours may exist in that they have a stronger or weaker impact on employees’ innovative behaviour in a
given context. Leadership may also have indirect effects on outcomes, for instance,through creating a context in which innovative behaviour can flourish. For example,leadership may be crucial only in creating a work climate in support of employees’ innovative efforts.
5. Discussion
5.1 Conclusions and implications
One way for organizations to become more innovative is to capitalize on their employees’ability to be innovative. This paper aimed to contribute to the literature on individual innovation by providing an inventory of leader behaviours that may influence
employees’ innovative behaviour. We focused on behaviours that specifically influence employees’ individual innovative efforts (rather than performance or effectiveness as much previous work did). In developing the inventory, we paid explicit attention to both the generation of ideas and employees’ application behaviour, i.e. behaviours directed towards the implementation of creative ideas as the latter has received far less attention to date. We also differ from previous work in our focus on leaders in knowledge-intensive service firms. Individual innovation has received little attention in such firms, which is surprising given how relevant innovation by employees is for knowledge-intensive services. Our study provides insights into the behaviours that leaders in knowledge-intensive services use to stimulate innovation among their employees.
Drawing on a literature review and in-depth interviews, we identified 13 leader behaviour constructs that are proposed to influence either idea generation or application behaviour or both. The range of identified leader behaviours is wide: as a leader it seems impossible not to affect employees’ innovative behaviour. We revealed some leader behaviours that can serve as a direct trigger to influence employees’ idea generation and/or application efforts, but we also highlighted the impact of some general leader behaviours that are displayed as part of any leading profession. The latter are more general in the sense that they do not specifically aim to stimulate innovation. In other words, leaders in knowledge-intensive services also influence innovative behaviour through their “day-to-day” ways of doing things.
Leaders vary in the extent to which they typically display consulting, delegating and monitoring behaviour. As was shown, these practices are likely to have an impact on both employees’ idea generation and application behaviour. Given our findings, leaders trying to enhance individual innovation among their employees could attempt to consult them more often, ensure that employ