Employee innovation is the cornerstone of the organization, and the motivation for employee innovative behavior largely depends on the leadership style of the leader. With the economic development of society, the traditional authoritative style of leadership can no longer adapt to the psychological characteristics of employees, who use new-era work concepts, techniques, and social rules (hereafter, new generation employees). Inclusive leadership is based on the concept of “fully inclusive and equitable” in traditional Chinese culture, and it can adapt to the independent needs of new generation employees. At present, the research on the relationship between the traditional leadership style and employee innovative behavior is relatively extensive, but there is little research on the relationship between inclusive leadership style and employee innovative behavior, and this needs further exploration. This paper takes new generation employees as the sample and uses psychological capital as an intermediary variable to explore the influence of inclusive leadership style on the innovative behaviors of new generation employees. We found that inclusive leadership is significantly and positively related to new generation employees’ innovative behavior. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Career sustainability is a well-researched issue in academics and other sectors. Technology advancements and COVID-19 have jeopardized career sustainability. Numerous studies have explored the influence of individual characteristics on career sustainability, but few have focused on leadership. In addition, cultural factors must be considered because leadership is rooted in culture. In particular, inclusive leadership reflects traditional Chinese culture. Therefore, based on self-determination social exchange theories, we analyzed the effects of inclusive leadership on career sustainability as well as the roles of thriving at work and supervisor developmental feedback (SDF) in career sustainability. In total, 363 samples were collected from China. The results revealed that inclusive leadership improves career sustainability through SDF and thriving at work. Theoretically, our study fills the research gap and establishes a mechanism and theoretical framework for inclusive leadership and career sustainability. Practically, we offer guidance for enterprises to cultivate inclusive leadership and improve career sustainability.

The high turnover rate of new generation employees is becoming an increasingly important issue for business and academia. Based on self-determination theory and conservation of resource theory, our study explores the impact of the inclusive talent development model on the turnover intention of new generation employees and the mediating role of work passion. Based on the questionnaire of 290 new generation employees’ data from China, after common method biases and reliability and validity tests, we used SPSS, Mplus and bootstrapping for empirical analysis. The result showed that the inclusive talent development model includes the diversified talent team construction, rational tolerance of employee’s opinions and failures, emphasis on employee’s training, emphasis on fairness and win–win and emphasis on employee’s advantages. The work passion has been divided into harmonious passion and obsessive passion. Among them, rational tolerance of employee’s opinions and failures, emphasis on employee’s training and emphasis on fairness and win–win have a significant positive impact on harmonious passion. Emphasis on fairness and win–win and emphasis on employee’s advantages have negative correlation with obsessive passion. The employee’s harmonious passion is significantly negatively correlated with the turnover intention and the obsessive passion is significantly positively correlated with the turnover intention. In addition, the harmonious passion plays a mediating role between rational tolerance of employee’s opinions and failures, emphasis on employee’s training, emphasis on fairness and win–win and employee’s turnover intention, while the obsessive passion plays a mediating role between emphasis on fairness and win–win and emphasis on employee’s advantages and employee’s turnover intention.

PurposeTo better understand factors that lead to business model innovation (BMI) in organizations, this study argues that inclusive leadership is the primary source that motivates employee engagement in boundary-spanning activities, which fosters BMI by generating and integrating employee knowledge through boundary-spanning exploration.Design/methodology/approachThis paper analyzes the relationships between inclusive leadership, boundary-spanning exploration and BMI to discover how they influence each other. This is achieved by a survey of more than 30 enterprises in Zhejiang Province, China. The survey data are analyzed using SPSS.FindingsInclusive leaders who display characteristics of openness, accessibility and availability have a positive effect on BMI and boundary-spanning exploration; openness and accessibility have more significant positive effect on BMI and boundary-spanning exploration.Research limitations/implicationsBecause this study covers only in Zhejiang Province, in China, the findings may not be easily generalizable to other contexts. Other factors, such as organizational structure and contextual characteristics, could also be added as antecedents in a future investigation. Moreover, the scales could be revised more suitable for China in the future.Practical implicationsThe empirical findings can be used as guidelines for firms seeking to take advantage of inclusive leadership and to help firms motivate their employees to engage in boundary-spanning exploration to acquire, generate and integrate knowledge from diverse sources to promote BMI.Originality/valueThis study provides insights that will be of value by adding to the theoretical foundation of our understanding of the antecedents to firms' BMI. This study argues that employees' boundary-spanning exploration is important to BMI as well. Inclusive leadership is crucial to stimulate boundary-spanning exploration by employees. Therefore, how to encourage inclusive leadership in firms is well worth examining.