Unpacking Organizational Support for Employee Ideation and Experimentation in Early-Stage Innovation

Perceived organizational support could be critical for translating employees creativity into organizational-level innovation outcomes. Existing studies exhibit a one-size-fits-all approach toward organizational support, overlooking contextual differences regarding the resources employees require at individual phases of the process, particularly ideation and experimentation. Drawing on Social Exchange Theory, we argue that different forms of organizational support are needed to resource individual phases of the innovation process. Our findings from a global survey of 1001 managers demonstrate that organizational support for ideation and experimentation have differential effects on employee engagement in organizational innovation and its outputs (process versus products). We further find that time availability - a critical but often overlooked resource - moderates the relationship between support for experimentation and engagement in product and process innovation, but in subtly different ways.