**2. Literature review**

A number of researchers have recently examined the connection between EC and IB; in contrast, the impact of IB on OI has been investigated. As a consequence, the association between EC, IB and OI is taken into account in the literature review.

## **2.1 Employee creativity (EC)**

In the professional and organisational context, creativity has the power to provide novel and valuable ideas [12, 14]. According to Zhou and George [15], an idea cannot be deemed creative unless it is both useful and novel. The distinction between "Big C" and "Little C" creativity—i.e., "Big C" creativity that results in a significant breakthrough to occur for products or service changes on a regular basis and "Little C" creativity that we perform for minor additions or to solve problems in our daily lives —was also revealed by Joo et al. [16]. The distinction between historical (H) and psychological (P) creativity was made by Boden [18] in contrast. P creativity refers to ideas that are created on a personal basis, while H creativity refers to concepts that are "fundamentally original given the totality of human history" [17–19]. Some experts describe creativity as the creation of unique and advantageous ideas for procedures, services, goods and approaches [20, 21]. The research examined the definitions used for innovative ideas, innovative business plans and innovative approaches to problems at work and in the workplace [22]. When developing new procedures or products, creative outcomes may vary from minor adjustments to workflow or product breakthroughs [23].

*Innovative Behaviour Mediates in the Relationship between Employee Creativity… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111861*

## **2.2 Innovative behaviour (IB)**

The words "innovative behaviour (IB)" and "innovative work behaviour (IWB)" used by De Jong and Den Hartog [24] refer to the same concept. IB was introduced as a revolutionary idea by West and Farr [25] and Yuan and Woodman [13] to allow workers to create or improve the rules, practices and products at their organisation or corporation. Innovative behaviour (IB) involves psychological and social benefits (including better communication, higher job satisfaction and better job fit) in addition to enhanced organisational performance, according to Janssen [26]. Individuals, groups, or organisations may all take IB activities. The three stages of IWB disclosure are concept generation, idea promotion and idea implementation [27]. The first step is identifying problems and novel solutions; the second is finding support and forming alliances to put the novel solutions into practice; and the third is institutionalising and disseminating the novel solutions once they have attracted sufficient support to carry out the procedure and produce a prototype [27]. Thirteen leadership behaviours that are used to encourage innovation in practices, processes, goods and services have been identified by De Jong and Den Hartog [28] and are linked to the creation of new ideas. In [28], these actions are mentioned. (For instance, task assignment, oversight, resource provision, inducements, acknowledgement, organisation of feedback, support for creativity, delegation, advising, providing vision, promoting information dissemination, intellectual stimulation and creative role modelling). The four facets of IB were also mentioned by De Jong and Den Hartog [24] (idea exploration, generation, championing and implementation). Yuan and Woodman [13] and West and Farr [25] both claim that workers' IB generates service procedures and difficulties at work. This behaviour includes seeking for novel ideas, including new work practices, technology, services and products, as well as ensuring the purchase of resources needed to put novel concepts into practice. In a similar vein, scholars and practitioners have neglected the notion of innovative behaviour for decades [29, 30] despite the fact that these factors—such as the development, transfer, modification and implementation of new ideas—as well as IB obviously encourage it.

### **2.3 Organisational innovation (OI)**

Academics and professions utilise several definitions of innovation. Schumpeter [31], for instance, defined the role of innovation as a crucial element of economic change that revolves around entrepreneurial activities and innovation market power, demonstrating that market forces originating from innovations can afford better outcomes than price rivalry and the hidden hand. Innovation is "the creation, recognition, and execution of new ideas for process, services, or product," according to Thompson [32].

Innovation may be utilised to effectively implement new procedures, services, products and processes for the benefit of a firm and its stakeholders, according to West and Anderson [33] and Wong et al. [34]. Innovation is seen as a way to change an institution, either as a proactive action to influence the environment or as a reaction to change in the external environment, according to Damanpour [35]. Plessis [36] The researcher said, "Innovation is the generation of new information to support new business outcomes, anticipated at enhancing structures, and internal business processes to develop market-driven service and product items." The OECD claims that innovation is integrated into business operations or external relationships by

using a new organisational method, marketing strategy, process, or product that embraces innovation in non-technological, technological, marketing, process and product areas like goods and services [37]. Additionally, some scholars classified two kinds of innovation (i.e., incremental innovation and radical innovation). While incremental innovation involves significant changes made to the existing processes or items, radical innovation involves the complete introduction of a new method or product to the market [38]. For instance, Nadkarni et al. [39] and Perry-Smith and Mannucci [40] both define radical innovation as collecting new knowledge, skills, and new processes and executing change inside the organisation. However, in recent years, a theory of disruptive innovation has been emphasised to discourse in innovation perspective, which is a strong style of thinking and to encourage innovationdriven development [41]. Radical innovation is not required to incorporate disruptive innovation. Disruption is defined as a procedure by which the services and items are fashioned with simple stages from the bottom of a market that assists in moving upmarket to maintain among competitors and effectively manage the issues of tiny enterprises [41]. But Bedford et al. [42] and Benner and Tushman [43] showed that incremental innovation is defined by the extension of an organisation's current capabilities to represent the protection of surviving capabilities, to apply fundamental technology and to rely on existing industry knowledge [1].

### **2.4 EC and IB**

Both constructs EC [15] and IB [27] are independently revealed in earlier literature and represented a process for turning a novel idea into an implementation technique [13, 44]. As an example, creativity is presented in the first phase as the development of original and workable ideas [12], to offer a fresh procedure, approach, or method to an organisation [23, 45]. In addition, when frontline personnel manage the solution to the issue of consumers while providing their job services, it consumes employee creative engagement such as cognitive process [46]. The same goes for cognitive engagement, which is a cognitive construct and not a behavioural one [47]. The implementation of innovative ideas [27] and a problem-solving strategy at the workplace or organisational level [48] are shown by IB in the second phase. Additionally, the form of creative interaction is much more crucial to the implementation of fresh ideas at work [10]. As a consequence, recent study produced findings that indicated EC greatly affected employees' IB [10]. The findings of a different investigation revealed that EC alone accounted for around 47% of the variation of IB [9]. A key aspect of IB that is highlighted in contemporary research is creativity.

#### **2.5 IB and OI**

The literature study suggests that IB is a behaviour of workers that plays an unusual or discretionary function [49, 50] and that carries out a concept that has been produced and promoted inside the company [13, 26]. IB is a multifaceted concept that includes a variety of employee behaviours, including problem-solving by coming up with ideas, spotting opportunities or problems, or seizing them, evaluating ideas, endorsing promotions, securing funding and finding supporters for applying ideas' requirements and creating implementation plans [24, 27]. IB is also connected to the idea of learning, namely exploratory learning [51]. Additionally, IB is linked to learning [52] in an organisational setting, which encourages employee cooperation, the

*Innovative Behaviour Mediates in the Relationship between Employee Creativity… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111861*

unlearning of previously formed beliefs, experimentation, revision, or knowledge gain, among other things. The capacity to identify, evaluate and implement new skills, abilities and knowledge inside an organisation is encouraged through exploratory learning [53]. IB is said to support innovation by helping to shape new services or products, according to researchers [4–13, 49]. In a study by Fu et al. [54], 120 Irish accounting businesses were chosen for the purpose of data collection, and it was discovered that IB strongly correlated new customers and new services (i.e., employed the instrument of innovation). IB, additionally, refers to a person's capacity to develop and execute ideas that result in innovation [5]. IB associates to the phases of the innovation process [3]. For instance, some researchers discovered encouraging findings showing that IB strongly correlated with new product originality on the one hand and IB positively correlated with new product radicalness on the other [3]. Additionally, Naranjo-Valencia et al. [5]'s noteworthy research shown a good correlation between IB and OI (i.e., radical product innovation).

#### **2.6 Componential theory of organisational innovation and creativity**

Amabile's [12] componential theory of organisational creativity and innovation defines innovation as "the execution of the novel idea at the job," along with management practices, intrinsic motivation, creative skill, expertise, resources, organisational motivation and environment [20, 55]. Creativity is defined in an organisation as "the ability to generate new and useful ideas." Expertise, skills, and intrinsic motivation are a few examples of the human characteristics that foster creativity. Expertise is described as unique abilities, competence and knowledge in the field of work, while intuitive motivation is defined as a personal feeling of interest, participation and happiness at work [20, 55, 56]. Skills are a part of a cognitive inclination to experiment with various working approaches, propose new ideas and adopt novel perspectives. The environment and resources are in place to support performance (such as innovation), management practices foster employees' capacity for original thought and aid in the presentation of innovative work within the context of the organisation, and management systems encourage the use of cutting-edge administrative practices and technologies at work to achieve organisational innovation [57]. Individual, social and organisational creativity also promote innovation [58, 59]. Since services are a key component of economic activity in modern societies [60, 61], organisations hope that EC and OI will support their marketing strategies, product delivery and company operations with enhanced knowledge-based business services [62, 63]. For instance, it was found that 94 groups effectively fulfilled 13 different goals by using intrinsic motivation, ability and innovation [22] in accordance with Amabile's [12] componential theory. Both innovation and creativity have advantages, but they also reinforce one another [14, 64]. Amabile's [12] componential theory, which links a range of components (such as psychological factors, leadership styles, organisational factors, EC, IB, OI and performance) in an institutional environment, was lastly articulated by Amabile and Pratt [65].
