A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Maria de Lurdes Calisto and Soumodip Sarkar
Mackenzie, Podsakoff and Podsakoff (2011) demonstrate that challenge-oriented behaviour in the
form of voice has important effects on sales, profit as a percentage of sales, and turnover. Van Dyne,
Cummings and McLean Parks (1995) argue that, because voice behaviour is designed to provide
creative and constructive suggestions, it should help the organization adapt to external changes in the
environment. Similar points have also been made by Organ, Podsakoff and MacKenzie (2006), who
noted that employees who have close contact with the marketplace and who make suggestions about
how to respond to changes that they see taking place also help the organization adapt more easily to
environmental changes.
3. Antecedents and measures
In an interactionist approach, behaviour is the result of both situational and dispositional antecedents
(Endler and Edwards 1986). So, it is pertinent to compare the antecedents of both constructs.
Situational antecedents: Several authors have acknowledged the important role of context
regarding organizational citizenship like behaviours (e.g. Mowday and Sutton 1993; Stamper and Van
Dyne 2001). Other situational factors such as team psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999) have
also been found to be positively associated with employees' voice behaviour. Other authors have
stressed the importance of leaders in motivating employees to voice their opinions (e. g. Detert and
Burris 2007). Liu, Zhu and Yang (2010) found that employees are most likely to voice their opinions
towards someone whom they strongly identify with, and that transformational leaders have direct
positive effect on employee extra-role behaviours. The components of transformational leadership,
namely, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, idealized influence, and individualized
consideration (Bass and Avolio 1994), should all encourage employees' voice behaviour. With the
support and encouragement of leaders, employees are more likely to focus on tasks rather than
worries and fears, thus they become willing to take risks to voice their opinions. Fuller, Marler and
Hester (2006) argue that there is a strong positive relationship between access to resources and
voice behaviour. Stamper and Van Dyne (2001) suggest the highest levels of OCB require both a full
time work status and less bureaucratic organizational culture. Folger (1993) argues the need for an
organizational system that exhibits procedural fairness for extra-role behaviours to emerge.
It is common to find in the entrepreneurship literature that the main antecedents to entrepreneurial
action within the firm are structure (Naman and Slevin 1993), work discretion / autonomy (Hornsby,
Kuratko and Zahra 2002); strategy (Naman and Slevin 1993); strategy making process (Covin and
Slevin 1991; Lumpkin and Dess 1996; Covin and Miles 1999); firm resources (Hornsby, Kuratko and
Zahra 2002); organizational culture (Dess and Lumpkin 2005); top management team characteristics
(Ling et al. 2008); leadership and managerial support (Hornsby, Kuratko and Zahra 2002; Kurakto et
al. 2005; Ling et al. 2008).
From the above we can conclude that voice and autonomous entrepreneurial behaviour have many
common situational antecedents, as shown in Figure 2.
INTRAPRENEURSHIP
STRATEGY
VOICE STRUCTURE
STRATEGY MAKING PROCESS
BEHAVIOUR WORK
TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM
DISCRETION / AUTONOMY
CHARACTERISTICS
FIRM RESOURCES
TEAM PSYCHOLOGICAL
CULTURE
SAFETY LEARDERSHIP
AND
MANAGERIAL SUPPORT
Figure 2: Overlapping of situational antecedents
However, there are some antecedents of intrapreneurship that are not usually considered in the voice
behaviour literature, and the inverse is also true. This doesn’t mean that they have never been
studied or that they are not relevant. Considering the similarities in the construct that we pointed out
to in the previous section this only calls for the need of more empirical research to address this
question.
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