Research On The Relationship Of Knowledge Employees’Psychological Contract Perception And Innovation Behavior

In an era of knowledge economy, innovation strategy has become an important part in the political, economic and cultural comprehensive development strategy of countries and regions. The national innovation has been paid close heed to. The enterprises, as the main part of the market economy, bear many new functions to promote the development of the economy and the society such as technological innovation, management innovation, market innovation, service innovation, brand innovation and organizational cultural innovation. A large number of facts(elaborated in the first section of Chapter1) have proved that the comprehensive creative abilities of the enterprises in China are still weak in the international market, and we are in urgent need of continuous, fast and quick comprehensive creative abilities that are basically important in the fierce market competition. The employee innovation is the basis of the organizational innovation, and employees are the most important factor in the process of the organizational innovation (Amabile,1988; shalley,1995). Knowledge employees are in every section of an enterprise, and are the main body of technological innovation, management innovation, market innovation, service innovation, brand innovation and organizational cultural innovation. They are at the nerve end of the enterprise’s comprehensive system, and hence they are most capable of spotting problems, recognizing and making good use of opportunities. We should make every knowledge employee an innovation unit that seeks innovation, change and development. We should try to find, recognize and satisfy knowledge employees’ individual needs, and touch their heart, influence their emotion, arouse their motivation and promote their innovative behavior.Recently, individual innovation behavior has become a hot topic in the theory circles. Researchers mainly explore the organizational influence factor, individual influence factor of individual innovation behavior and its influence mechanism from the perspective of one or several variables. This research systematically explores the influence mechanism of individual innovation behavior from the perspectives of environment determinism and organizational behavior. It enriches the theoretical achievements of individual innovation behavior, explores the present situation of innovation behavior of knowledge employees, and discusses how to promote employees’ innovation behavior through effective human resource management practice. Based on the relevant domestic and foreign theoretical achievements concerning individual innovation behavior, psychological contract and organizational commitment, human nature hypothesis, incentive theory and social exchange theory, this research explores on the psychological contract perception, organizational commitment and innovation behavior of knowledge employees in China. First, it profoundly discusses the definitions, dimensions, formations, measuring methods, antecedent variables or outcome variables of three main variables, as well as the correlations among the variables(in Chapter2). Then, it presents the problems to be further explored, as well as the problems to be settled in this research. Besides these, it constructs research models concerning the three variables of psychological contract perception, organizational commitment and innovation behavior, and puts forward five research hypotheses(in Chapter3). After that, utilizing the methods of literature reading, expert consultation, profound interview, focus group discussion and the like, the dissertation presents operational definitions to the three main variables, and forms the initial questionnaires concerning knowledge employees’innovation behavior, and then makes the formal questionnaires through the methods like small sample survey, analysis of questionnaire reliability and validity, and exploratory factor analysis (in Chapter4). Following that, a large sample survey is done. The hypotheses are tested through descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis,variance analysis, correlation analysis, partial correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis of the variables (in Chapter4). Lastly, the dissertation draws the conclusion, presents relevant management suggestions from the perspectives of the enterprise and the employee, and analyses the points that remain to be researched and problems to be further explored(in Chapter6).Through the comprehensive analysis of the825questionnaires, conclusions can be drawn as follows.1. The psychological contract perception, organizational commitment and innovation behavior of knowledge employees have significant differences for different variables of personal backgrounds.From the significant effect extent of the eight background variables towards the three main variables(8dimension variables), the variables of organizational commitment and employee innovation behavior are most obviously affected by background variables(the continuance commitment is obviously affected by the six background variables except the diploma and department variables), and the psychological contract perception is the least affected. The employee’s position has obvious effect on psychological contract perception, organizational commitment and innovation behavior, and is the one background variable having the greatest effect on the mean value of the eight dimension variables. Sex has obvious effect on the mean value of the four variables of affective commitment, continuance commitment, formation of innovative conception and practice of innovative conception. Age has obvious effect on the mean value of four variables of transactional obligation perception, continuance commitment, formation of innovative conception and practice of innovative conception. Diploma only has obvious effect on the formation of innovative conception. The line of the unit only has obvious effect on the continuance commitment. The unit character only has obvious effect on continuance commitment and normative commitment. The working section has no obvious effect on every dimension of the three main variables.2. The better psychological contract perception an employee has, the more outstanding innovation behavior he hasThe relevant analyses and the multiple regression analyses show that the psychological conception and employee innovation behavior have an obvious positive correlation. The employee’s psychological contract perception has a good predication of his innovation behavior, including the aspect of "put forward innovation conception and practice it". This shows that the better psychological contract perception an employee has, the more outstanding innovation behavior he has.3. The better psychological contract perception an employee has, the higher organizational commitment he has.Regression analyses show that the relation between psychological contract perception and organizational commitment and that between the three psychological contract perception factors and the three organizational commitment factors is both a very obvious positive correlation. The employee’s psychological contract perception has a good predication of its organizational commitment, and this shows that the better psychological contract perception an employee has, the higher organizational commitment it has. The analyses further indicate that the transaction responsibility sense has a relatively obvious effect on the three factors of the organizational commitment. This indicates that enterprise managers should strengthen their responsibilities of salary and welfare and working environment towards the employees.4. The higher organizational commitment an knowledge employee has, the better innovation behavior he will have Regression analyses show that the relation between organizational commitment and innovation behavior and that between the three organizational commitment factors and the two innovation behavior factors is both a very obvious positive correlation. The employee’s organizational commitment has a good prediction of its innovation behavior, which shows that the higher organizational commitment an employee has, the better innovation behavior he will have. The analyses further indicate that affective commitment and normative commitment have a relatively obvious effect on the two factors of innovation behavior, especially the forward prediction of affective commitment is very outstanding. This indicates that enterprise managers need to increase employees’sense of honor, sense of identity, sense of belonging and sense of responsibility towards the enterprises, and then encourage employees’ innovation behavior.5. The organizational commitment has an intermediary role between the psychological contract perception and employee’s innovation behaviorPartial phase analysis shows that organizational commitment, affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment have an intermediary role between the psychological contract perception and its dimensions and employee’s innovation behavior. And the intermediary role of organizational commitment and affective commitment is very obvious whereas the intermediary role of continuance commitment and normative commitment is relatively unobvious. This conclusion shows that the psychological contract perception can promote employee’s innovation behavior through the role of organizational commitment because employee’s conception of performance of the origination’s responsibilities and obligations towards the employee will directly influence employee’s sense of honor, sense of identity, sense of belonging, sense of attachment and sense of responsibility towards the organization, further strengthen employee’s motive to make contributions to the organization, encourage employees to care the organization more, find its problems as well as outside opportunities, put forward, promote and carry out new ideas and schemes that can help to increase the organization’s efficiency.