学习目标导向对员工创新的影响:基于元分析的心理与行为机制

The Influence of Learning Goal Orientation on Employee Creativity: A Meta-analytic Structural Equation Model

学习目标导向会对员工心理和行为产生影响进而影响员工创新,有必要厘清其作用机制和边界条件。整合社会认知理论与知识管理理论,运用元分析结构方程模型,定量化综合检验关于学习目标导向与员工创新关系的84份实证研究文献。结果显示:学习目标导向与员工创新显著正相关,团队层面的正向影响比员工个体层面更强;创新自我效能感、知识共享在学习目标导向与员工创新之间存在链式中介作用,即创新自我效能感通过激发知识共享促进员工创新;员工特征、企业特征、文化背景等情境因素,以及测量工具、测量方法等测量因素,均显著影响学习目标导向与员工创新之间的关系。

As an important factor affecting employees’ cognition and behaviors, learning goal orientation has an indirect impact on employee creativity. It is quite necessary and possible to clarify its explanation mechanism and boundary conditions.By reflecting on the different perspectives of existing empirical studies, it shows that the research results of learning goal orientation and employee creativity vary in identified linear correlation, inverted U-shaped correlation and S-shaped correlation. This paper assesses these different conclusions to clarify the effects on employee creativity caused by different levels of learning goal orientation. When it comes to the explanation mechanism between learning goal orientation and its influence on employee creativity, recent studies use a single theory perspective, either social cognitive theory or knowledge management theory as their analytical framework. Social cognitive theory attaches great importance on employee confidence, but fails to illustrate how employee confidence transforms into actions of employee creativity. Knowledge management theory stresses the actions taken by employees, but also ignores how learning goal orientation changes into actions on employee creativity. Combining both social cognitive theory and knowledge management theory as theoretical framework, this paper aims to better explicate the relationship between learning goal orientation and employee creativity. Further, recent research has not paid sufficient attention to the moderating effect of learning goal orientation. This paper focuses on how situational and measurement factors impact existing conclusions and identifies the boundary conditions of learning goal orientation influence on employee creativity. Among situational factors, employee characteristics divide micro-situations among the participants;corporate characteristics help identify meso-situations of participants′ creativity;and cultural background indicates how macro-situations affect participants′ thoughts and behaviors. Among the measurement factors, analysis of measurement tools and measurement methods provides insights into the dynamic relationship between variables. A meta-analysis helps combine the existing independent research results and enable researchers to research the boundary conditions while controlling participants’ characteristics as well as to testify the explanation mechanism through matrix computation of a structural equation model. On the basis of 83 empirical studies and 87 independent samples, this study uses Comprehensive Meta-Analysis(CMA) 2.0 to analyze the relationship between learning goal orientation and employee creativity at individual and team levels. ANOVA is used in the meta-analysis to calculate average effect size in each group and research the moderating effects of individual characteristics, corporate characteristics, cultural background and the measurement factors comprising measurement tools and measurement methods;and the mediating effect of creative self-efficacy and knowledge sharing through meta-analytic structural equation models(MASEM) are explored with the help of Amos 26.0. The results show that firstly there is a significant positive correlation between learning goal orientation and employee creativity. The level of learning goal orientation differentiates its influence, and the correlation coefficient at the team level is greater. However, learning goal orientation at the team level is not a simple aggregation at the individual level, but forms a kind of learning goal orientation that pays attention to the cognition of the overall goal. Secondly learning goal orientation produces a positive effect on employee creativity by raising creative self-efficacy or promoting knowledge sharing. Besides, there is an internal chain mediating relationship between creative self-efficacy and knowledge sharing or creative self-efficacy can promote knowledge sharing, further raising employee creativity. Thirdly situational factors, comprising of individual characteristics, corporate characteristics and cultural background, have a significant impact on the main effect. With situational factors like Neozoic employees, knowledge workers, high-tech enterprises, enterprises in developed regions and enterprises in China, learning goal orientation has a positive influence on employee creativity. Fourthly the moderating effect of measurement tools and methods is prominent. Vandewalle scale has the closet correlation with the practice of corporate management. Common measurement is likely to cause common method biases, while measuring with time interval can reduce common method bias effectively, providing a more reliable reflection of dynamic relationship between different variables. This paper is conducted not only to find the theoretical basis for the relationship between learning goal orientation and employee creativity, but also to offer guidelines for the practice of learning goal orientation in creativity management. The results recommend that a company′s human resource departments should pay attention to an employee′s learning goal orientation capacity and cultivate this capacity steadily. Further, the company should be well prepared in spiritual resourcing employee creativity, establish an internal knowledge sharing system and encourage the knowledge sharing to induce creative thoughts. Finally, the company should make a proper plan for cultivating learning goal orientation capacity based on factors like employee and corporate characteristics.