PurposeWith the rapid development of the service industry, service innovation has gradually become a hot topic in business today. How to further improve employees' service innovative behaviors has become critical to organizations' survival and success. Servant leadership, as a leadership style characterized by serving others, is closely related to employees' service innovative behaviors. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical framework to examine the influence of servant leadership on employees' service innovative behavior, the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the moderating role of identification with the leader.Design/methodology/approachTo test the theoretical model, a multi-time survey method was used to collect data from 381employees from a large high-tech company in Mainland China.FindingsThe results confirm that servant leadership can promote employees' service innovative behavior and intrinsic motivation. Meanwhile, employees' intrinsic motivation partly mediates the influence of servant leadership on their service innovative behavior. Moreover, this mediating relationship is conditional on the moderating role of individual identification with the leader in the path from servant leadership to individual intrinsic motivation.Research limitations/implicationsThe key limitation of this study lies in the representativeness of sample data, which is the convenience of non-probability sampling and self-reported data only from a large high-tech company in China.Practical implicationsThis study not only further verified a promotion factor of individual service innovative behavior from the perspective of leader influence, but also enriched the understanding of the positive influence of servant leadership on employees.Originality/valueThis study is the first to examine the relationships among servant leadership, employees' intrinsic motivation, identification with the leader and service innovative behavior. The results may help to open the “black box” of the relationship between servant leadership and employees' service innovative behavior by introducing their intrinsic motivation. The conclusions also indicate employees' identification with the leader is an important boundary condition among their relationships. Particularly, it not only moderates the relationship between servant leadership and intrinsic motivation, but also moderates the mediating role of intrinsic motivation.

Previous scholars have recognized the critical role of supervisors in stimulating employee innovative behavior, although it is still unclear whether and how supervisor developmental feedback impacts employee innovative behavior. To resolve this issue, the present study develops and verifies a moderated mediation model to explore the positive influence of supervisor developmental feedback on employee innovative behavior via creative self-efficacy, as well as the moderating role of a supervisor’s organizational embodiment in this process. Analyses of the multi-time data from 375 employees indicate that supervisor developmental feedback is positively associated with employee innovative behavior via his/her creative self-efficacy. Moreover, a supervisor’s organizational embodiment moderates the influence of supervisor developmental feedback on employee creative self-efficacy and the mediating role of creative self-efficacy. From these analyses, the present study not only further develops several views of pervious research in the field of supervisor feedback and employee innovation, but also provides a potential managerial way to promote employee innovative behavior from the perspective of supervisor feedback.

The influence of leader humor on employee innovative behavior has been attracting increasingly more attention from various scholars and enterprises. Based on previous relevant literatures in the fields of humor, leadership, and innovation, this study proposes and verifies a model to examine the internal mechanism and boundary condition of the relationship between leader humor, work engagement, supervisor’s organizational embodiment, and employee innovative behavior. Specifically, this study introduces work engagement as a mediator in the relationship between leader humor and employee innovative behavior, and supervisor’s organizational embodiment as a moderator in the relationship between leader humor and work engagement. Then, this study conducts two separate questionnaire surveys on Chinese employees and their direct supervisors at two different times to collect the sample data. In total, 383 supervisor–subordinate dyads were collected. The results suggest that leader humor can promote employee innovative behavior. Work engagement can partly mediate the influence of leader humor on employee innovative behavior. Supervisor’s organizational embodiment of employee can positively moderate the influence of leader humor on work engagement, which in turn ultimately should account for positive increases of employee innovative behavior. The conclusions from the analyses above not only further verify and develop some previous points on leader humor and employee innovation but also derive certain management implications for promoting employee innovative behavior from the perspective of leader humor.

Purpose This study aims to investigate the mediating role of positive affect and the moderating role of deficit correction in the relationship between employee strengths use and innovative behavior. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted a three-wave research design to gather data. A convenience sample of 189 employees working in diverse organizations in China was applied to examine the hypotheses. Findings The results indicated that employee strengths use was positively related to innovative behavior, and positive affect mediated the relationship between employee strengths use and innovative behavior. In addition, deficit correction enhanced the direct relationship of employee strengths use with positive affect and the indirect relationship of employee strengths use with innovative behavior through positive affect. Originality/value The current study contributes to the existing literature on employee strengths use-innovative behavior relationships by revealing positive affect as a mediator and deficit correction as a moderator between employee strengths use and innovative behavior.

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