Innovation capacity: Resilience as an underpinning trait that promotes innovation readiness

摘要

The general business problem is that competitive advantage suffers because of the lack of employee engagement and employee innovative work behavior. Inability of business to determine methods or opportunities to affect levels of work engagement and innovative work behavior of employees limits the ability of the business to gain competitive advantage. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study is to examine the relationship between levels of resilience and levels of work engagement, and levels of resilience and levels of innovative work behavior. The body of literature in these three areas fails to identify a relationship between resilience and work engagement or between resilience and innovative work behavior. This proposal examined the concepts of resiliency, work engagement, and innovative work behavior to determine if a relationship exists between the three constructs building on Fredrickson's 1998 broaden and build theory. Data was collected using an online survey tool. Participants were employed by large, for-profit U.S. based companies. The researcher employed River Sampling to collect data. Results were analyzed for completeness and incomplete surveys were not used in the data analysis. Raw data was translated into two categories of resilience (low and high), and three categories each for work engagement and innovative work behavior (low, medium, and high). The findings show a significant, positive relationship between levels of resilience and levels of work engagement, and between levels of resilience and levels of innovative work behavior. This study provides meaningful contributions to the body of literature in the areas of resilience, work engagement, and innovative work behavior by establishing a significant relationship between resilience and work engagement and between resilience and innovative work behavior. Practitioners can use the results of this study to develop new methods for improving levels of work engagement and levels of innovative work behavior by developing efforts to improve resilience.