Rewards and employee creativity among rural healthcare employees: the mediating role of organizational support for innovation and the moderating impact of supervisory support

Purpose This paper aims to explore the mediating effect of organizational support for innovation and moderating impact of supervisory support on how rewards shape employee creativity among rural healthcare employees, a group with few resources and considerable expectations. Design/methodology/approach Using a regression-based moderated path analysis, the authors tested the hypotheses with healthcare employee survey data from a large Southern rural hospital in the USA. Findings The empirical results suggest organizational support for innovation mediates the influence of rewards on employee creativity. In addition, the indirect effect of rewards on employee creativity via organizational support for innovation is moderated by supervisory support, such that the indirect effect is more pronounced at high levels of supervisory support than at low levels of supervisory support. Originality/value This study contributes to the organizational support and creativity literature by exploring the indirect relations of rewards on employee creativity through organizational support for innovation, and the moderating role of supervisory support in such relations.

Effects of Leader Networking Behaviors and Vertical Faultlines on Support for Innovation

Leader networking behaviors for innovation (LNBI) is an important yet less studied topic in innovation research. This study investigates the behavioral cascading effect of LNBI on organizational support for innovation. Building on faultline theory and the demographic representativeness approach, we conceptualize vertical faultlines as demographic misalignment across job ranks, and hypothesize their moderating effects on the relationships between LNBI and organizational support for innovation. Results from a large, multi-source sample of 55 work units in a U.S. high-technology firm support the mediation model that senior leaders’ LNBI influences unit-level support for innovation through junior leaders’ LNBI. Moreover, the relationship between junior leaders’ LNBI and unit-level support for innovation was more pronounced in work units with weaker rather than stronger vertical faultlines between employees and junior leaders. Our findings highlight the importance of leader networking activities and structural configurations of workforce diversity in building organizational support for innovation.