This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
This study aimed to investigate the relationship of employee growth mindset with innovative behavior and the mediating role of use of strength as well as the moderating role of strengths-based leadership in this relationship. Data with a sample of 244 employees working in diverse Chinese organizations were collected at two points in time. Results of bootstrapping analyses demonstrated that growth mindset is positively related to innovative behavior, employee strengths use partially mediates the positive relationship of growth mindset with innovative behavior, and strengths-based leadership strengthens the direct relationship between employee growth mindset and innovative behavior and the indirect relationship of employee growth mindset with innovative behavior via strengths use. This study advances growth mindset and innovative behavior theories and research.
Keywords: growth mindset, innovative behavior, strengths use, strengths-based leadership, workplaceMindset theory, which originates from educational psychology, has attracted considerable interest of the researchers due to its positive effect on students' motivation and achievement (Yeager and Dweck, 2020; Xu et al., 2021). Dweck (2006) suggested that individual mindsets can be divided into two categories, namely, growth mindset, and fixed mindset. Individuals with a growth mindset believe that their attributes such as intelligence are malleable, whereas individuals endorsing a fixed mindset believe that their attributes are stable (Yeager and Dweck, 2020). Many studies have indicated that people with a growth mindset are more likely to learn from their mistakes and reach higher levels of learning performance and achievement than people with a fixed mindset (e.g., Asbury et al., 2016; Bostwick and Becker-Blease, 2018; Yeager and Dweck, 2020). In addition, previous research has also found that employee growth mindset contributes to improved employee engagement (Keating and Heslin, 2015), task performance, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behavior (Han and Stieha, 2020).
Unfortunately, we have less knowledge of the relationship between employee growth mindset and innovative behavior. Innovative behavior has been defined as “an employee's intentional introduction or application of new ideas, products, processes, and procedures to his or her work role, work unit, or organization” (Yuan and Woodman, 2010, p. 324); it is a crucial influencing factor of organizational effectiveness and sustainable development (Scott and Bruce, 1994; Aryee et al., 2012).
To motivate employees to exhibit more innovative behaviors, researchers have identified many antecedents to innovative behavior from the perspective of employee characteristics such as creative self-efficacy (Newman et al., 2018), proactive personality (Li et al., 2017), conscientiousness, and openness to experience (George and Zhou, 2001). However, to the best of our knowledge, no prior research has been found to empirically investigate the relationship between employee growth mindset and innovative behavior. In essence, innovative behavior is characterized by risk and difficulty (Janssen et al., 2004; Menguc and Auh, 2010). As employees with a growth mindset do not worry about making mistakes and are good at addressing issues (Chao et al., 2017), it is possible to postulate that employee growth mindset is positively related to innovative behavior. Thus, the first aim of this study is to test this relationship.
In addition, although prior literature has investigated the effects of growth mindset from diverse perspectives (e.g., Corradi et al., 2019; Cutumisu, 2019; Yeager et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2021), we have less knowledge about why growth mindset can lead to various positive outcomes. A recent study has investigated the cognitive mechanism (i.e., reasoning ability) underlying the effect of growth mindset (Wang et al., 2020). However, it is worth noting that behavioral process is also an important perspective for explaining the effect of mindset (Meyers et al., 2020). Unfortunately, existing literature on growth mindset neglects this point. Strengths use, defined as the behaviors that individuals proactively leverage their own strengths in various contexts (Van Woerkom et al., 2016), might serve as a potential mediator between growth mindset and innovative behavior because employees who regard personal strengths as malleable (Jach et al., 2018) are more likely to play to their strengths at work so as to further develop their strengths, thereby leading to increased innovative behavior (Ding et al., 2021). As a result, the study's second aim is to investigate the behavioral process mechanism (i.e., employee strengths use) through which growth mindset is positively related to innovative behavior.
More importantly, the efficacy of individual characteristics is influenced by the contextual factors (Orvis and Leffler, 2011). For instance, Tierney et al. (1999) found that employees high in adaptive cognitive style can execute more invention disclosure forms when the relationship between employee and supervisor is supportive and of high quality. In a similar vein, when a supervisor executes more strengths-based leadership behaviors, his/her followers with growth mindset will be likely to capitalize on their strengths at work, thereby leading to increased innovative behavior. Strengths-based leadership refers to the extent to which leaders take various actions to promote their own and employees' strengths identification, deployment, and development (Burkus, 2011). Strengths-based leadership conveys an important cue to employees that leveraging strengths at work is appreciated and encouraged by the employer organizations or leaders (Ding and Yu, 2021). According to trait activation theory, when a situation relevant to a trait provides cues for the display of trait-related behaviors, individuals will exhibit more relevant behaviors (Tett et al., 2021). Based on this logic, we can postulate that when strengths-based leadership is high, employees who have higher levels of growth mindset may exhibit more strengths use behaviors and subsequently execute more innovative behaviors. Therefore, the third aim of this study is to test the positively moderating effect of strengths-based leadership on the relationships between growth mindset, strengths use, and innovative behavior.
In sum, this study aimed to develop and examine a moderated mediation model regarding growth mindset, strengths-based leadership, strengths use, and innovative behavior. This study adds to growth mindset and innovative behavior literature in three ways. First, this is the first study to empirically investigate the relationship between employee growth mindset and innovative behavior, which provides new insight into the antecedent to innovative behavior, and extends previous research on the effect of growth mindset. Second, by examining the mediating effect of employee strengths use, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the probable behavioral mechanism through which growth mindset is positively associated with innovative behavior. Third, by investigating the moderating effect of strengths-based leadership, this study helps find a better way of maximizing the effects of growth mindset in terms of enhanced strengths use and innovative behavior.
This study is organized as follows. We reviewed relevant literature and develop the hypotheses of this study in the “Theory and hypothesis development.” The “Method” section presents participants, data collection procedures, and measures. In the “Results” section, we displayed the results of confirmatory factor analyses, descriptive statistics, and hypotheses testing. The “Discussion” section explains the theoretical and practical implications, potential limitations, and directions for future research. Finally, we summarized this study in the “Conclusion” section.
Over the past two decades, mindset research has gradually triggered researchers' interest (e.g., Caniëls et al., 2018) in that mindset dominates our ways of perceiving the world and then influences our attitudes, motivation, and behaviors (Cseh et al., 2013). Growth mentality and fixed mindset are the two types of mindset (Yeager and Dweck, 2020). Importantly, in recent years, researchers have paid more attention to growth mindset because growth mindset can bring out more benefits to individuals such as increased intrinsic motivation compared with fixed mindset (Zhao et al., 2018) and decreased perceived cognitive load (Xu et al., 2021). Dweck (2006) has demonstrated that individuals with a growth mindset consider their characteristics such as talents, intelligence, strengths, and abilities as malleable. In the face of difficulties and setbacks, individuals high in growth mindset are more optimistic and resilient (Blackwell et al., 2007). Moreover, there was evidence that growth mindset is related to adaptive health and psychosocial outcomes such as lower anxiety and postoperative pain (Kain et al., 2021). Although several studies have also shown that growth mindset is able to lead to various desired outcomes for employees such as increased work engagement (Keating and Heslin, 2015; Zeng et al., 2019) and decreased work stress (Zhao and Chen, 2021), less is known about the relationship between employee growth mindset and innovative behavior.
This study postulates that growth mindset employees will execute more innovative behaviors. Employees with a growth mindset are more likely to view challenges and difficulties as crucial opportunities to learn and progress, according to the research (Paunesku et al., 2015; Chao et al., 2017). As innovative behavior is challenging and risky (Yuan and Woodman, 2010; Hsu and Chen, 2017), employees with a growth mindset might execute more innovation at work so as to learn from the process of innovation. Furthermore, growth mindset employees always work hard (Bedford, 2017), proactively seek feedback and help from others (Cutumisu, 2019), and try novel strategies to attain their goals (Abernethy et al., 2021). These positive behaviors not only contribute to employee innovation but also are the manifestation of employee innovative behavior. More importantly, O'Keefe et al. (2018) have pointed out that growth mindset might have a positive relationship with innovation. As a result, we suggested the following hypothesis, based on the foregoing rationale and the argument by O'Keefe et al. (2018).
Hypothesis 1: Employee growth mindset is positively related to innovative behavior.
Alongside the development of positive psychology, strengths-based approaches have garnered more and more attention from scholars and practitioners (e.g., Proctor et al., 2011; Ruch et al., 2020). Therein, a growing body of research has focused on employee strengths use due to its positive effect on employees' attitudes, motivation, emotions, behaviors, and performance (e.g., Bakker and Van Woerkom, 2018; Bakker and van Wingerden, 2021). Employees who capitalize on strengths at work, for example, are more engaged at work and experience higher levels of work meaningfulness and job satisfaction (Littman-Ovadia et al., 2017). In addition, strengths use has been found to be positively related to wellbeing, self-esteem, and self-efficacy (Proctor et al., 2011), and be negatively associated with feelings of depression and stress (Wood et al., 2011; Huber et al., 2017). More importantly, when employees utilize their strengths at work, they are more apt to exhibit more innovative behaviors because strengths use can foster employees' positive affect (Ding et al., 2021); such emotional resource subsequently stimulates employees to take risky behaviors (Isen and Patrick, 1983), thereby promoting employee innovative behavior. Recent empirical research has provided evidence for the positive relationship between employee strengths use and innovative behavior (Ding et al., 2021).
Given that strengths use can lead to various positive outcomes, several scholars have investigated the antecedents to employee strengths use. Extant research found that individuals' characteristics such as core self-evaluation (Ding and Lin, 2020), proactive personality (Yi-Feng Chen et al., 2021), and strengths endorsement (Tang et al., 2019) contribute to enhanced strengths use. Nevertheless, we have yet to know whether growth mindset as a crucial individual characteristic (Mesler et al., 2021) relates to strengths use. This study believes that growth mindset is positively related to strengths use because individuals with a growth mindset tend to consider their strengths as malleable and are more likely to deploy their strengths in various positive ways (Jach et al., 2018). More importantly, Zhao et al. (2021) suggested that growth mindset is able to lead to valuable outcomes through behavioral mechanisms. Based on this argument, we postulated that growth mindset can positively influence innovative behavior via strengths use. In sum, the following hypothesis was derived.
Hypothesis 2: Employee strengths use mediates the relationship between employee growth mindset and innovative behavior.
Although strengths-based leadership has been demonstrated to be quite effective in promoting employee strengths use (Ding and Yu, 2021), we have yet to know whether it can act as a moderator between employee growth mindset and strengths use. This study postulates that strengths-based leadership can also enhance the positive relationship between employee growth mindset and strengths use. As demonstrated earlier, according to trait activation theory, when a situation relevant to a trait provides cues for a display of trait-related behaviors, individuals will exhibit more such behaviors (Tett et al., 2021). A great deal of empirical research has supported this argument (e.g., Zagenczyk et al., 2017; Luria et al., 2019). For instance, Javed et al. (2020) found that openness to experience will have a stronger influence on innovative work behavior when ethical leadership is high rather than low. Growth mindset can be treated as a specific strength-related trait (Ryazanov and Christenfeld, 2018). If a contextual factor conveys a signal to employees high in growth mindset that leveraging strengths at work is appreciated and encouraged, employees will tend to make the most of their strengths at work. Because substantial literature has shown that leadership can serve as an activation factor of traits in employees (e.g., Colbert and Witt, 2009; Xu and Yu, 2019), it is possible to anticipate strengths-based leadership as a moderator in the relationship between growth mindset and strengths use.
Specifically, when strengths-based leadership is high, employees can receive an important cue from leaders that their leaders appreciate and encourage employee strengths use (Ding et al., 2020). Based on the logic of trait activation theory, employees who hold a growth mindset will take advantage of their own strengths at work if their leaders exhibit more strengths-based leadership behaviors. This is because the signal that strengths-based leaders convey to employees contributes to activating strengths-related traits of employees. Accordingly, we believe that strengths-based leadership might enhance the positive relationship between growth mindset and strengths use. Furthermore, as strengths use might mediate the growth mindset-innovative behavior linkage, it is reasonable to believe that strengths-based leadership might boost the mediational effect of strengths use on the relationship between employee growth mindset and innovative behavior. Based on the above discussion, we postulated the following hypotheses.
Hypothesis 3. Strengths-based leadership positively moderates the relationship between growth mindset and strengths use in such a way that the relationship of growth mindset with strengths use is stronger when strengths-based leadership is high rather than low.
Hypothesis 4. Strengths-based leadership positively moderates the mediational effect of strengths use on the relationship between growth mindset and innovative behavior in such a way that the mediational effect of strengths use is stronger when strengths-based leadership is high rather than low.
The proposed research model is presented in Figure 1 .