Is coworker feedback more important than supervisor feedback for increasing innovative behavior?

• Date: 01 July 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21960
• Author: Alexander Newman,Gary Schwarz,Hannah Meacham,Tse Leng Tham,Nathan Eva
• Published date: 01 July 2019

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Is coworker feedback more important than supervisor

feedback for increasing innovative behavior?

Nathan Eva

1

| Hannah Meacham

1

| Alexander Newman

2

| Gary Schwarz

3

|

Tse Leng Tham

4

1

Department of Management, Monash

Business School, Caulfield, Victoria, Australia

2

Deakin Business School, Deakin University,

Burwood, New South Wales, Australia

3

School of Finance and Management, SOAS

University of London, London, UK

4

College of Business, RMIT University,

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Correspondence

Gary Schwarz, School of Finance and

Management, SOAS University of London,

London, UK.

Email: gary.schwarz@soas.ac.uk

A growing body of research explores human resource management practices that encourage

employees to innovate. In this study, we examine the links between different sources of feed-

back (supervisor and coworker) and employees’innovative behavior. Drawing on social

exchange theory and the job demands-resources theory, we first propose that work engage-

ment and psychological contract breach mediate the relationship between supervisor feedback

and employees’innovative behavior. Second, we propose a moderated mediation model in

which coworker feedback attenuates the relationships between supervisor feedback and

employees’innovative behavior through the mediating mechanisms of both work engagement

and psychological contract breach. Using three waves of multisource data from 300 Chinese

employees and their 64 supervisors, we found a dual-mediation pathway by which employees’

work engagement and perceptions of psychological contract breach mediate the influence of

supervisor feedback on innovative behavior. Our results also show that coworker feedback can

be used to supplement the lack of supervisor feedback when required. Organizations are

advised to ensure that employees obtain regular feedback from multiple sources because such

feedback can promote employees’work engagement and perceptions that the organization is

upholding its side of the psychological contract, which fosters employees’innovative behavior.

KEYWORDS

coworker feedback, innovative behavior, psychological contract breach, supervisor feedback,

work engagement

1|INTRODUCTION

Promoting innovati ve behavior has becom e imperative for organ iza-

tions aiming to compet e and survive in an ever-changing global b usi-

ness environment (Y. Chen, Tang, Jin, Xie, & Li, 2014), thus

becoming an increasing area of interest to human resource manage-

ment (HRM) researchers and practitioners (Cooke & Saini, 2010).

Innovative behavi or is defined as the generation and imp lementation

of ideas (Amabile, 2000) and is generally discretionary based on the

nature of the employee’s relationship with the organization or mem-

bers within it (Ng & Feld man, 2010). HRM pract itioners place an

enduring importance on facets of the organ ization that encour age

employees to engage in innovative behavior, such as the provision

of feedback from sup ervisors (Prieto & P erez-Santana, 201 4).

Feedback provides detailed information to employees about how

they are performing their job role (Dodd & Ganster, 1996) and can

therefore be adopted as a HRM practice to support e mployees to

perform effectively at work (Pulakos, Hanson, Arad, & Moye, 2015).

While there is evide nce to suggest that te am-based feedback i s

encouraged in many wor kplaces, the majorit y of academic studies

have focused on the eff ects of feedback fro m managers, with few

studies examining w hether feedback fro m coworkers influen ces the

innovative behavior of employees (Donia, O’Neill, & Brutus, 2015;

Smither, London, & Reilly, 2005). Annual performance feedback

evaluations from sup ervisors remain the “norm”for a ma jority of

organizations, al though organizati ons that draw on and uti lize feed-

back from wider employ ee groups may perform at a hi gher level

(Murch, 2018).

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21960

Hum Resour Manage. 2019;58:383–396. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 383