Middle-managers’ innovative behavior: the roles of psychological empowerment and personal initiative

Middle-managers are vital catalysts for organizational innovation, acting as a bridge between organizational strategy and goals set by senior-managers and the actions of lower-level employees. Their proactive motivation to engage in innovative work behavior is therefore central to organizational endeavor. However, the innovation literature is replete with studies focusing solely on organizational-level determinants of middle-managers’ innovative behavior while the HRM literature focuses predominantly on the experiences of lower-level employees. Little is known about the psychological factors and processes which give rise to middle-managers innovative work behavior. Drawing on the proactive motivation model, this study examines whether middle-managers’ personal initiative mediates the relationship between the four dimensions of their psychological empowerment and their innovative work behaviors. Drawing on a sample of 110 middle-manager–supervisor dyads, our study highlights personal initiative as the mechanism through which psychological empowerment influences innovative work behaviors. Our work further informs the HR literature about how HR practices and systems may be used to foster middle manager proactivity in the workplace. In total, our study seeks to take a step towards reducing the dearth in knowledge on the psychological determinants of middle-managers’ innovative work behaviors.