Investigating the Relationship between Cognitive Decision-Making Style and Innovative Work Behavior

The study of business transformation trends in current organizations, especially in knowledge-based ones, indicates new trends in the business environment in which innovation is considered the main factor of advancement, power, and competitiveness. Meanwhile, the human capital of organizations, which is one of their intangible values, plays a key role in realizing and promoting innovation. With regards to employees of organizations as the initiators of the innovation process, the implementation of innovative policies in organizations seems to depend largely on their employees’ characteristics. Meanwhile, cognitive styles are proven to be the cause of differentiation in individuals. Since innovation is the result of having problem-solving insights in individuals, taking individual perspectives among the various factors affecting organizational innovation, this study is aimed to recognize and investigate the relationship between the employees’ decision-making style and their innovative work behavior.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

Innovative work behavior is the intentional behavior of employees to create, introduce, and implement new ideas to reach shared organizational benefits. This behavior is a multidimensional construct at the individual level consisting of exploring, producing, supporting, and implementing an idea by employees. Among potential affecting factors, cognitive decision-making styles are of most important ones that affect employees’ innovative behaviors. Few studies in this field examined individual factors like employees' characteristics as a basis for innovative work behavior. Cognitive styles are made up of employees' physical and psychological characteristics that determine their individual and organizational behaviors. Studies indicate that styles for performing complex tasks such as problem-solving, decision-making, learning, and causal explanations of life events are compatible with changing work routines. Kirton's adaptive-innovative style is comprised of three dimensions of originality, efficiency, and rule governance, based on which employees analyze and solve the problems considering the two ends of adaptation and innovation. Originality shows employees' creativity in problem-solving; efficiency refers to accuracy, reliability, and discipline; rule governance deals with respect for regulations and legal authorities.

Employing a quantitative research method and a researcher-made conceptual model, the relationships between innovative work behavior and its components (exploration, generation, advocation, and implementation of ideas) with cognitive decision-making style and its components (originality, efficiency, and rule governance) were examined. Also, the moderating effects of age, gender, and organizational position were analyzed. The needed data was gathered by distributing questionnaires among 950 employees working in 12 different departments of a knowledge-based IT firm. Linear regression analysis was conducted in SPSS v.27 and Minitab v.20 software to test the research hypotheses.

All the components of the decision-making style did not affect the innovative work behavior. In fact, decision-making style was only a good predictor for two components of innovative work behavior, including exploration and generation of ideas. Research results also indicated that the variables of age, gender, and organizational position moderate the relationship between decision-making style and innovative work behavior. In addition, pieces of evidence were found for the association of originality with idea generation and efficiency with idea implementation. It was also determined that, among various components of decision-making style, rule governance has a strong relationship with the advocation and implementation of ideas.

CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

The relationship between decision-making style and innovative work behavior has been rarely studied. This study would thereby enrich the literature by extending the current knowledge because suggested that having decision-making insights play a significant role in the emergence of innovative behavior. Given the strong relationship between rule governance and advocating and implementing ideas, it is concluded that both the organizational and individual factors have an important role in accomplishing innovativeness in organizations. Therefore, future researchers are recommended to consider individual and organizational factors simultaneously to better percept organizational innovation.