European policy is focusing on innovation as a way out of the economic crisis. At the same time, job insecurity is rising as Europe is still in crisis. In this paper, we examine whether job insecurity affects the innovative work behaviour of employees by focusing on the relation between job insecurity, job autonomy, work engagement and innovative work behaviour (IWB). Using employee level survey data, we use structural equation modelling to disentangle the relations between these variables. The partially mediated model shows the best fit with the data. This model shows that job insecurity and autonomy are both directly and indirectly, through work engagement, related with IWB. For autonomy these relations are positive, while they are negative (and smaller) for job insecurity. Moreover, a negative covariance is observed between job insecurity and autonomy.

Job autonomy is a key enabling factor for employee engagement and innovative employee behavior. Although job autonomy used to be viewed as a multi‐dimensional construct, there has been little recent discussion on the different dimensions of job autonomy and how they relate to employee outcomes. This study uses a sample of 927 employees from different sectors to research the relation between autonomy regarding the (1) work method, (2) work scheduling, (3) work time and (4) place of work and two main employee outcomes: work engagement (WE) and innovative work behavior (IWB). The results show that all studied dimensions of autonomy are bivariatly related to higher levels of WE and IWB. Yet, when simultaneously analyzing the dimensions of job autonomy using structural equations modelling, most of the effects become insignificant. For WE, only the effect of work method autonomy is statistically significant. For IWB, work method and locational autonomy play a positive role. This signals that the current managerial attention for, e.g., work time autonomy (flexitime) does only contribute to enhanced work engagement and IWB insofar as such a systems result in higher work method autonomy.

As innovative employees become imperative for an organizations' success, research identified job design as a crucial variable in promoting innovative work behavior (IWB) (Hammond et al., 2011). Using the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model of Bakker & Demerouti (2007) Broeck et al., 2010) , this article contributes to the literature as it uses recent insights on the distinction between job challenges and job hindrances (Van den

As employees' behaviour is a crucial factor for organizational success, the question on how to promote the engagement of employees in their work and boost their implication in the innovation process is central for companies. In this article we study this question building on the Karasek model suggesting that employees in jobs with high autonomy and time pressure will be more engaged and more innovative. The results of the multi-level regression analyses confirm that such a combination is associated with high employee innovation. For work engagement, the job autonomy helps in buffering the negative effects of time pressure.