بررسی تاثیر استراتژی نوآوری روی رضایت شغلی کارکنان بخش تحقیق و توسعه : مدل ریاضی و تحقیقات تجربی

This study develops a mathematical model to examine the effect of innovation strategy on R&D employee’s job satisfaction and to identify the optimal guidelines of innovation strategy, with conflict and organization performance being treated as the intermediary variables. The study further conducts an empirical survey to illustrate the contributions of this mathematical model. The results indicate that the product innovation has a greater influence on organizational performance, while the process innovation has a greater influence on conflict resolution among R&D employees. The mathematical and empirical results have provided an optimal guideline for determining the allocation of resources, which suggests that firms must focus on product innovation to gain the optimal R&D employee’s job satisfaction. In addition, the types of innovation policies along with rivals’ attitudes influence the advantages to be taken from a firm innovation strategy.

In a highly competitive environment, innovation is critical to a firm obtaining a dominant position and gaining higher profits. Innovation is capable of revitalizing the organization in that it requires exploring and exploiting the firm’s existing competencies (Hu and Hsu, 2008 and Kaminski et al., 2008). Thus, it has become the principal method for adapting to a dynamic environment (Doloreux and Melancon, 2008, Hua and Wemmerlov, 2006 and Roberts and Amit, 2003). Researchers in the fields of strategic management and organization theory have focused on the antecedents, consequences, and typologies of innovation. The issue of antecedents has been primarily concerned with the key factors or determinants leading to successful innovation (Nerkar and Roberts, 2004). As for the consequences of innovation, research has focused on addressing market acceptance, performance, and satisfaction (Hua and Wemmerlov, 2006). These studies have provided valuable contributions to the knowledge of innovation. Although numerous researchers have engaged in innovation-related studies (e.g., Hu and Hsu, 2008, Hua and Wemmerlov, 2006, Karniouchina et al., 2006 and Nerkar and Roberts, 2004), they tended to investigate from the perspective of the firm. The perspective of the R&D employees, the critical element to the success of innovation, in studying the impact of innovation strategy on performance, has been less addressed. Why do people engage in innovation activities? Both classical economics and transaction cost theory assume that people always act on the basis of their own interest (Williamson, 1991). That is, the R&D employee will engage in innovating only if those innovation activities can maximize his/her utility or satisfaction. Specifically, if the innovation activities are able to stimulate the R&D employee’s job satisfaction, the employees will be inclined to devote themselves to innovation. Thus, the task of managers is to understand how to satisfy R&D employees to enhance innovation activities. According to Bhoovaraghavan et al. (1996), product innovation and process innovation are the major facets of innovation strategy. Product innovation brings new products or services to meet market demands (Doloreux and Melancon, 2008), while process innovation is the operations technology that is new to the organization or changes the way products are made or delivered (Avermaete et al., 2003 and Bhoovaraghavan et al., 1996). The impact of innovation strategy on R&D employees’ job satisfaction should be considered from both the economic and non-economic psychosocial aspects (Geyskens et al., 1999). The non-economic psychosocial perspective examines the direct impact of conflict on affective response to the non-economic, such as whether the interactions with the exchange partner are fulfilling, gratifying, and easy (e.g., Lira et al., 2007 and Rose et al., 2007). As for the economic perspective, Webb and Hogan (2002) suggested that the primary source of an employee’s job satisfaction was organizational performance. Therefore, the intermediary variables involving organizational performance and conflict are taken into account. Accordingly, the first purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of product innovation and process innovation on organizational performance (i.e., economic aspect) and conflict (i.e., non-economic aspect), respectively. The second purpose is to evaluate the impact of organizational performance and conflict on R&D employees’ job satisfaction. In sum, this article attempts to clarify the relationships between innovation strategy and R&D employees’ job satisfaction. Conflict and organizational performance are both regarded as intermediary variables that may complicate but also help to identify the relationships between innovation strategy and an R&D employee’s job satisfaction. To accomplish these objectives, we developed a mathematical model to identify the optimal combination of product innovation and process innovation in order to gain optimal R&D employee job satisfaction under the given resources or R&D budget. Since constraints are usually required to derive the optimal solutions in the mathematical models, that may limit the explanation ability or application in real world settings, we conducted an empirical study with the participants from the R&D departments. Empirically testing the mathematical model would allow us to develop specific guidelines for determining the R&D budget allocation to maximize R&D employee’s job satisfaction.

Based on the results of previous research, this study extends the knowledge of innovation strategy (i.e., product innovation and process innovation) to develop the optimal model of R&D employees’ job satisfaction via intermediary variables of organizational performance and conflict. We examine the intermediary roles of organizational performance and employee conflict on the relationship among product innovation, process innovation, and job satisfaction by means of a mathematical model and an empirical study. Several conclusions can be derived from the development of the mathematical model. First, the optimal ratio of portfolio of two innovation strategies (i.e., product innovation and process innovation) is developed. Accordingly, firms can use the formula to calculate the optimal portfolio of innovation strategy. To model advanced innovation strategy in order to enhance the job satisfaction of R&D employees in a competitive environment, this article develops a model based on the conception of game theory. Therefore, the optimized formula not only considers the firm’s moderating effects of types of customers’ attitudes, partiality for product innovation and process innovation in the market, on the relationship between product innovation and organizational performance, but also integrates the competitive moves of the rivals. The parameters in the formula denote the magnitudes of the influences of product innovation and process innovation on the organizational performance, conflict, and R&D employee’s job satisfaction. Thus, the managers can determine the optimal product innovation and process innovation as long as they examine the magnitudes of influences among these variables in the competitive environment. Second, the game implies that a product innovation orientation is a dominant strategy that can create more competitive advantage when it is more contributive to organizational performance and the majority of consumers are in favor of product innovation. Otherwise, process innovation orientation will strictly dominate a tie or product innovation orientation. Furthermore, the types of innovation policies, along with rivals’ attitudes, influence the competitive advantage of each innovation orientation. The influence of product and process innovation on organization performance will be moderated by rivals’ attitudes. For example, product innovation may enhance competitive advantage and organization performance without regard to competitors’ moves. Nevertheless, if both the firm and its rivals adopt product innovation simultaneously, the increment of organization performance stemming from increased product innovation may shrink. Accordingly, game theory is a proper tool for decision making as it considers the influences of rivals’ moves. Finally, we also provide the optimal guideline for determining the allocation of resources. To illustrate the viability of mathematical models, this study transforms the data into the forms of natural logarithms. This study employs structural equation model to evaluate the parameters of the mathematical models. The empirical results of structural equation modeling support the use of these mathematical transformations. From the perspective of R&D managers or employees of R&D department, the empirical results support all hypotheses and forms of natural logarithms, which are the bases and premises of mathematical model. Specifically, both product innovation and process innovation can increase organizational performance. Although the marginal effects decrease, the impact of product innovation on organizational performance is greater than the impact of process innovation on organizational performance. This result implies that firm should allocate more resources to product innovation if the firm only focus on enhance organizational performance. The empirical findings indicate that the process innovation is significantly and positively related to conflict, whereas the product innovation is not significantly related to conflict. This result indicates that firm should encourage product innovation instead when the firm plans to control the levels of conflict among R&D employees. Empirical research also supports that organizational performance enhances R&D employees’ job satisfaction, but higher conflict among R&D employees will inhibit their job satisfaction. However, the impact of organizational performance on R&D employee’s job satisfaction is greater than the impact of conflict on R&D employee’s job satisfaction. Accordingly, if firm cannot enhance organizational performance and reduce conflict simultaneously, the firm should put forward a plan for improving organizational performance to achieve better R&D employees’ job satisfaction. The final question is which innovation strategy should be utilized when the firm endeavors to increase R&D employees’ job satisfaction. Our empirical findings imply that the firm is unlikely to use process innovation to enhance R&D employees’ job satisfaction through higher levels of organizational performance and lower levels of conflicts. Rather, the firm should use product innovation to enhance organizational performance, and in turn, the R&D employees’ job satisfaction.