Publication
Cognitive Uncertainty and Employees’ Daily Innovative Work Behaviour: The Moderating Role of Ambidextrous Leadership
This article by Bernard Bernards examines individual-level constraints on innovation by focusing on cognitive uncertainty as a personal state that may affect innovative work behaviour. While successful innovation requires employees both to explore new ideas and to exploit current processes, such innovative work behaviour is often bounded by constraints, both situational and personal.
- Author
- Bernard Bernards
- Date
- 28 March 2024
- Links
- Read the full article here
While successful innovation requires employees both to explore new ideas and to exploit current processes, such innovative work behaviour is often bounded by constraints, both situational and personal. This study examines individual-level constraints on innovation by focusing on cognitive uncertainty as a personal state that may affect innovative work behaviour. The analysis identifies a positive relationship between daily cognitive uncertainty experiences and daily employee innovative work behaviour. However, this relationship is only present when employees perceive substantial support from their team leader. This support takes the form of ambidextrous leadership, which mirrors the duality of the innovation process and is shown to be most effective in stimulating innovative work behaviour and in managing cognitive uncertainty in stimulating innovation. The research includes a quantitative daily dairy study among public professionals.
The findings of this research have important practical implications of the practice of public human resource management. First, public managers should carefully balance inducing and reducing cognitive uncertainty for their employees, as this may simultaneously reduce their effectiveness by hampering rational decision-making and increase their effectiveness by stimulating innovative work behaviour. Second, the finding that the effect of cognitive uncertainty on employee innovative work behaviour is contingent on ambidextrous leadership has vital implications for public HRM. It indicates that team leaders play an important role in shaping the context of public professionals’ work by managing cognitive uncertainty.
This study has used a novel theoretical and methodological approach to study employees’ innovative work behaviour. The results show that innovative work behaviour varies greatly across days and is profoundly impacted by the context of the work: the more that employees experience cognitive uncertainty, the more they engage in innovative work behaviour. Ambidextrous leadership strengthens this relationship and helps employees deal with the uncertain context of their work.