How Does Organizational Compassion Motivate Employee Innovative Behavior: A Cross-Level Mediation Model

Abstract

This study aims to explore the mediating mechanisms between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior by introducing perceived insider status and felt responsibility for constructive change (FRCC) as mediating variables. Drawing on cognitive-affective personality system theory, a cross-level mediation model was established. Data were collected via the online-based questionnaire from 420 employees of 12 enterprises in China. Multilevel path modeling was leveraged to examine hypotheses proposed in this study. The results indicate that FRCC mediates the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior. Moreover, perceived insider status and FRCC serially mediate the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior. This study has significant theoretical and practical implications as it is the first study to investigate the value of organizational compassion to employee innovative behavior at the workplace.

Keywords

Organizational compassion perceived insider status felt responsibility for constructive change employee innovative behavior

Introduction

In an increasingly competitive market environment, organizations are able to maintain their vitality and achieve sustainable development only through continuous innovation. Employee innovative behavior is an important element of organizational innovation (Lukes & Stephan, 2017). It not only directly enhances organizational innovation performance, but also benefits the survival and development of the organization, and is vital in maintaining organizations’ core competitive advantage (Anderson et al., 2004). Therefore, many scholars have focused on exploring such issues as what factors facilitate employee innovative behavior and how to motivate employee innovative behavior (Yuan & Woodman, 2010).

Previous studies have pointed out that situational factors such as HRM practices, high‐performance work system, ambidextrous organizational culture, and organizational support play important roles in influencing employee innovative behavior (e.g., Bos-Nehles et al., 2017; Z.-Q. Liu et al., 2015; Y. Liu et al., 2019; Miao et al., 2020), while this study focuses on a neglected but important situational factor which is named organizational compassion. As the old saying goes, life isn't a bed of roses. Workplaces also are fraught with pain and suffering which may arise from events in employees’ personal life (e.g., financial difficulties, the dissolution of romantic relationships, a family member being diagnosed with cancer), work-related factors (e.g., job stress, hostile coworker interactions, workplace violence), and organizational actions (e.g., layoffs, a merger that produces severe conflict) in the workplace (Dutton et al., 2014; Kanov et al., 2004). Meanwhile, suffering is also costly for organizations (Dutton et al., 2014). Therefore, organizational compassion is increasingly becoming an emergent organizational capacity (Madden et al., 2012) and an important situational factor affecting employees' work attitudes and behaviors (Kanov et al., 2004; Li et al., 2014; Lilius et al., 2008). In such circumstances, it can be biased to explore and study employee innovative behavior ignoring the situational factor of organizational compassion. However, while organizational compassion has attracted increased scholarly interest in the past two decades (Simpson & Berti, 2020), yet there is no research examining the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior to date. Then, is there no value of organizational compassion to employee innovative behavior? This study argues that the answer is no. In general, compassion refers to an empathetic action undertaken to alleviate another's pain (Frost et al., 2000). It is distinguishable from those constructs of empathy, sympathy, pity, and caregiving (Li et al., 2014). And organizational compassion is defined as “the process in which organizational members collectively notice, feel, and respond to pain within their organization” (Kanov et al., 2004, p. 821). Based on previous literature, we can see that organizational compassion is closely associated with employee innovative behavior. On the one hand, there are certain similarities between organizational compassion and organizational support. Organizational support connotes that organization values employee's contribution and cares about employee's well-being (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). Dutton et al. (2006) revealed that compassion often involved the provision of resources (e.g., time, concern, material goods) that can help people resolve or cope with the sources of their suffering. Lilius et al. (2008) pointed out that a compassionate response might take the shape of emotional or material social support, and compassion at work was associated with a variety of positive emotions and shaped a sufferer’s sensemaking about one’s organization (e.g., seeing the organization as caring). Therefore, organizational compassion also can improve employee's well-being through providing the crucial support necessary to alleviate their pain (Madden et al., 2012). Drawing on social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), Z.-Q. Liu et al. (2015) found that organizational support positively influenced employee innovative behavior through the perceived insider status. Therefore, according to social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), employees who experience compassion in organization may also exhibit innovative behaviors that benefit the organization. On the other hand, an empirical study revealed that compassion at work enhanced the creativity of service employees through the mediating effect of positive work-related identity (Hur et al., 2016). Creativity is the first stage of innovation, since it was defined as production of useful and novel ideas in any domain while innovation refers to implementation of creative ideas within an organization (Amabile, 1996). Moreover, previous studies found that positive moods and positive work-related identity mediated the relationship between compassion at work and organizational citizenship behavior (Chu, 2016; Moon et al., 2016). Since innovative behavior is essentially a manifestation of organizational citizenship behavior, organizational compassion may also closely associate with employee innovative behavior through certain mediating variables. Given the above, it is necessary to examine the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior by introducing certain mediating variables.

Considering that the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior concerns situational factor and individuals’ behavior, this study takes cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS) theory (Mischel & Shoda, 1995) as conceptual backbone. According to CAPS theory, individuals’ cognitive-affective factors might influence each other reciprocally and play an important mediating role in their situation-behavior relations (Mischel & Shoda, 1995). That is, situational factors can activate individuals’ cognitive-affective factors, which in turn cause them to engage in certain behaviors. CAPS theory held that individuals’ cognitive-affective factors mainly include five types: (a) encodings; (b) expectancies and beliefs; (c) affects; (d) goals and values; (e) competencies and self-regulatory plans. Among them, the first type of encodings refers to the categorization for the self, people, events, and situations (Mischel & Shoda, 1995). In specific, perceived insider status refers to individual space and acceptance degree perceived by employees regarding themselves as organization members (Masterson & Stamper, 2003), so perceived insider status belongs to this type of cognitive-affective factors. Moreover, previous studies indicate that when sufferers experience compassion at work, it alters their conceptions of themselves through sensemaking (Lilius et al., 2008), and perceived insider status partially mediates the influence of organizational support on employee innovative behavior (Z.-Q. Liu et al., 2015), fully mediates the influence of delegation on employee innovative behavior (Z. X. Chen & Aryee, 2007). Therefore, this study argues that perceived insider status also can mediate the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior. The second type of expectancies and beliefs are mainly about the self, about outcomes, as well as about self-efficacy (Mischel & Shoda, 1995). An individual’s felt responsibility for constructive change (FRCC) is referred to as the belief of individuals that personally obligate them to bring about constructive change for the organization (Morrison & Phelps, 1999), which belongs to this second type of cognitive-affective factors. Moreover, FRCC is a malleable psychological state that should reflect a willingness to put in more effort, as well as to bring about improvement, develop new procedures, and correct broader problems (Fuller et al., 2006). From this perspective, an individual’s innovative behavior can be regarded as one kind of behavioral expressions of FRCC. Previous studies have indicated that FRCC fully mediates the relationship between access to resources and continuous improvement that is similar with innovative behavior (Fuller et al., 2006), and “insiders” are more likely to get resources from organization (Stamper & Masterson, 2002). Therefore, this study argues that FRCC can mediate the relationship between perceived insider status and employee innovative behavior. To sum up, in order to clearly explore how organizational compassion links with employee innovative behavior, drawing on CAPS theory, this study introduces perceived insider status and FRCC as mediating variables and develops a serial mediating model reflecting the process that situational factors act on employees’ behaviors by activating their cognitive-affective factors. There are two purposes of this study: (1) offering a new interpretation mechanism for how employee innovative behavior emerges against the background that organizational compassion can be found in any kind of organization, and (2) promoting organizations to think about how to drive more employee innovative behaviors through enhancing organizational capacity for compassion.

Literature review and hypotheses development

Organizational compassion, perceived insider status, and FRCC

Perceived insider status reflects employees’ sense of belonging in the organization (Masterson & Stamper, 2003). On the one hand, this study proposes that organizational compassion will be positively associated with employees’ perceived insider status. According to CAPS theory, situational factors can activate individuals’ cognitive-affective factors (Mischel & Shoda, 1995). In fact, previous studies have showed that compassion benefits sufferers, such as calling up positive emotions and reducing anxiety (Lilius et al., 2008), helping them feel valued (Frost, 2003; Madden et al., 2012), and shaping their sensemaking about themselves (Lilius et al., 2008), which may improve their perceived insider status. Compassion also affects witnesses and bystanders (Dutton et al., 2014), such as increasing feelings of pride about the way that people in an organization are behaving (Dutton et al., 2007) and encouraging people to act more for the common good (Haidt, 2002). Compassion for laid-off employees also has a positive impact on the employees who survived the layoff, allowing them to feel the compassion within organization that contributes to their organizational identification (Grant et al., 2008) and sense of belonging. Meanwhile, employees who experience compassion tend to exhibit direct regardful and supportive behaviors towards other employees (Goetz et al., 2010). It can be seen that in the organizations which emphasize compassion, employees are likely to help each other, thus making them to feel closer to each other and strengthen their perceived organizational support (Lilius et al., 2008) and sense of belonging. Based on the above arguments and CAPS theory, this study argues that employees tend to have higher perceived insider status in those organizations which emphasize compassion.

On the other hand, this study argues that perceived insider status will be positively associated with employees’ FRCC. According to CAPS theory, individuals’ cognitive-affective factors are neither isolated nor static components. Instead, they interact with each other dynamically in individuals’ personality system, and the activated cognitive-affective factors can activate other cognitive-affective factors (Mischel & Shoda, 1995). Since “insiders” are more likely to get resources and support from supervisors and organization, they are more satisfied with their own work and are more likely to experience a sense of responsibility for making more contributions to the organization and helping the organization achieve its goals (Stamper & Masterson, 2002). In addition, Frese et al. (1996) proposed that felt responsibility relates to personal initiative at work, Fuller et al. (2006) pointed out that FRCC is a responsibility-related constructs that deal with personal initiative and proactive problem solving, and the empirical study of Raub (2018) found that perceived insider status positively predicts personal initiative and voice behavior. Therefore, it is likely that perceived insider status will also positively predict FRCC.

Taken together, this study proposes that perceived insider status will mediate the relationship between organizational compassion and employees’ FRCC and predicts the following hypothesis:

H1. Perceived insider status mediates the relationship between organizational compassion and employees’ FRCC.

Perceived insider status, FRCC, and employee innovative behavior

FRCC represents a more proactive conceptualization of an employee’s obligations at work (Fuller et al., 2006). This study expects that FRCC will be positively associated with employee innovative behavior. On the one hand, according to CAPS theory, activated cognitive-affective factors can cause individuals to engage in certain behaviors (Mischel & Shoda, 1995). Innovation behaviors imply potential risks of failure. As a positive belief, FRCC determines the extent to which employees exhibit extra-role behaviors that contain risks (Morrison & Phelps, 1999), and the behavioral expressions of FRCC are primarily intended to improve organization’s efficiency or effectiveness (Fuller et al., 2006). Consistent with this logic, previous studies have shown that FRCC drives employees to exhibit extra-role behaviors that are beneficial to the organization, such as continuous improvement (similar with innovative behavior) and taking charge (Fuller et al., 2006; Morrison & Phelps, 1999). Thus, FRCC, as an importance cognitive-affective factor, may also drive employees to exhibit innovative behavior. On the other hand, Fuller et al. (2006) pointed out that FRCC is related to role-breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) and job involvement. Previous empirical studies have verified that employees’ RBSE is positively associated with innovative work behavior (Clarke & Higgs, 2020) and innovative performance (G. Chen et al., 2013). Meanwhile, there has been empirical evidence indicating that job involvement is positively associated with innovative behavior (Singh & Sarkar, 2012). Therefore, it is likely that FRCC will also be positively associated with employee innovative behavior.

Since perceived insider status may positively associate with employees’ FRCC, and FRCC may positively associate with employee innovative behavior, this study proposes that FRCC may play an important mediating role linking perceived insider status to employee innovative behavior and predicts the following hypothesis:

H2. FRCC mediates the relationship between perceived insider status and employee innovative behavior.

The serial mediating effects of perceived insider status and FRCC

Based on Hypothesis 1 and 2, this study proposes that organizational compassion motivates employees’ FRCC by improving their perceived insider status, which in turn promotes employee innovative behavior. According to CAPS theory, in the organizations that emphasize compassion, the policies and practices for compassionating employees enable them to feel that they are “insiders” of the organization. In turn, this positive cognition motivates their FRCC to the organization. Then the enhanced responsibility drives these employees to exhibit innovative behavior that is beneficial to the organization. To sum up, this study develops a serial mediating model of “organizational compassion – perceived insider status - FRCC - employee innovative behavior”, which reflects the process that situational factor affects individuals’ cognitive-affective units and then acts on individual behavior, and predicts the following hypothesis:

H3. Perceived insider status and FRCC serially mediate the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior.

Overall, Figure 1 depicts the proposed theoretical model of the current study.

Figure 1.

Hypothetical model.

Method

Participants and procedures

This study distributed internet-based questionnaires to collect data and a cross-sectional research design was used. First, this study developed the questionnaire on an online questionnaire survey platform (www.wjx.cn), and then sought support from HR department of 20 enterprises in Central China, East China, and South China. After understanding the research purposes and survey needs of this study, 12 enterprises were willing to offer support. Next, the network link of questionnaire was sent to employees through WeChat group and QQ group by HR department of these 12 enterprises. Participants who received the link completed the questionnaires online, voluntarily and anonymously. In order to encourage participants to complete these questionnaires, WeChat red packets or QQ red packets were sent out together with the network link of questionnaire. Participants who completed the questionnaires were each given 5 Yuan (RMB) through WeChat or QQ red packets (which are Chinese popular online applications). All of the respondents were assured of confidentiality and the data collected were to be used only for third-party research purposes. A total of 539 employees were invited to participate, 479 employees completed the surveys. The industries of the surveyed enterprises involved real estate, Internet, pharmaceuticals, etc. After excluding questionnaires with short answer time or consistent answers of normal and reversed items, 420 valid questionnaires were retained, with a response rate of 77.9%. The average number of valid participants in each enterprise was 35, with the lowest number of respondents being 31 and the highest being 42. Among the participants, 51.7% of employees were male; 16.7% were under 25 years, 38.8% were between 26–30 years, 31.9% were between 31–35 years, and 12.6% were 36 years and above; 15.5% hold degree of college diploma and below, 54.7% hold bachelor’s degree, and 29.8% hold master degree; 32.4% worked within 1 years, 20.7% worked for 1–2 years, 19.5% worked for 3–4 years, and 27.4% worked for more than 5 years.

Measures

Employees provided ratings of all items and their own demographic information. The items of organizational compassion scale were assessed using a 5-point Likert-type frequency scales (1 = never, 5 = nearly all the time). The items of the other three scales were assessed using a 5-point Likert-type agreement scales (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree).

Organizational compassion

This study used a 3-item scale with Lilius et al. (2008) to measure organizational compassion. Items include “I experience compassion on the job”, “I experience compassion from my supervisor”, and “I experience compassion from my co-workers”. The reliability estimate for the scale in this study was 0.88.

Perceived insider status

This study used a 6-item scale with Stamper and Masterson (2002) to measure perceived insider status. Items include “I feel I am an ‘insider’ in my work organization”, “I feel very much a part of my work organization”, “My work organization makes me believe that I am included in it”, “I feel like I am an ‘outsider’ from my work organization”, “I don’t feel included in this organization”, and “My work organization makes me frequently feel ‘left-out’”. The scale’s alpha reliability in this study was 0.87.

Felt responsibility for constructive change

This study used a 5-item scale with Morrison and Phelps (1999) to measure FRCC. Items include “I feel a personal sense of responsibility to bring about change at work”, “It’s up to me to bring about improvement in my workplace”, “I feel obligated to try to introduce new procedures where appropriate”, “Correcting problems is really not my responsibility”, and “I feel little obligation to challenge or change the status quo”. The item “Correcting problems is really not my responsibility” was later deleted due to low communality. In this study, alpha reliability for the retained four items was 0.81.

Employee innovative behavior

This study used a 6-item scale with Scott and Bruce (1994) to measure employee innovative behavior. Items include “I often generate creative ideas”, “I investigate and secure funds needed to implement new ideas”, “I often promote and champion my ideas to others”, “I develop adequate plans and schedules for the implementation of new ideas”, “I often search out new technologies, processes, techniques, and/or product ideas”, and “I think I am innovative”. The item “I often search out new technologies, processes, techniques, and/or product ideas” was later deleted due to low communality. In this study, the reliability estimate for the retained five items was 0.84.

Control variables

Given that previous studies have suggested that employees’ gender (Wu et al., 2014), age (Scott & Bruce, 1994), education (Janssen, 2000; Wu et al., 2014) and organizational tenure (Scott & Bruce, 1994) were related to their innovative behavior, this study controlled for these variables when conducting hypothesis test.

Control and assessment of common method variance

This study leveraged several approaches to minimize common method bias based on Podsakoff et al.’s (2003) recommendations. First, this study used different response formats for the measurement of organizational compassion and other variables. The items of organizational compassion scale were assessed using a 5-point Likert-type frequency scales (1 = never, 5 = nearly all the time). The items of the other three scales were assessed using a 5-point Likert-type agreement scales (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Meanwhile, the scales of perceived insider status and FRCC include some reversed items. Second, in order to make respondents fill out the questionnaire as honestly as possible, this study stated on the questionnaire that this questionnaire was anonymous, and all data collected were only for academic research purpose and would not be fed back to their supervisor and company. Further, all respondents filled out the questionnaire confidentially.

This study used harman’s single-factor test to assess common method bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Results indicate that the goodness-of-fit of the single factor model is quite low (see in Table 1). Therefore, common method bias is not serious in this study.

Table 1.

Confirmatory factor analysis results.

Models	χ²	df	△χ²	TLI	CFI	RMSEA	SRMR
Four-factor: OC; PIS; FRCC; EIB	412.36	129		0.91	0.93	0.072	0.063
Three-factor: OC; PIS + FRCC; EIB	783.18	132	370.82***	0.81	0.83	0.108	0.088
Three-factor: OC + PIS; FRCC; EIB	828.39	132	416.03***	0.79	0.82	0.112	0.078
Two-factor: OC + PIS + FRCC; EIB	1202.95	134	790.59***	0.68	0.72	0.138	0.102
Single-factor: OC + PIS + FRCC + EIB	1759.05	135	1346.69***	0.52	0.58	0.169	0.131

Note: N = 420; OC: organizational compassion, PIS: perceived insider status, FRCC: felt responsibility for constructive change, EIB: employee innovative behavior (the same below); + Two variables were combined into one factor.***p<0.001.

Analytical strategy

This study used MPLUS version 7.0 when conducting multilevel path modeling analysis to test the mediating effects. First, this study regarded organizational compassion as an organizational level variables but the scale was measured by employees, so the data needs to be aggregated before analyzing it. To evaluate the adequacy for aggregation of data, Rwg, ICC(1), and ICC(2) were calculated. Results show that the mean Rwg of organizational compassion is 0.89 (ranging from 0.72 to 0.97) and exceeds the 0.70 criterion (James et al., 1984); the ICC(1) of organizational compassion is 0.50, and the ICC(2) of organizational compassion is 0.97, both up to the standards (Bliese & Halverson, 1998). Moreover, the result of analysis of variance shows that there is a significant difference for the organizational compassion among different organizations (F = 35.74, p < 0.001). Therefore, it is adequate to aggregate the individual data of organizational compassion to organizational level when testing the hypotheses.

Second, the average for each scale was computed to represent employee's perceived insider status, FRCC, innovative behavior, and organizational compassion experience. The average of employees’ organizational compassion experience for each enterprise was computed to represent organizational compassion.

Third, in view of the fact that the mediating effects were assumed in this study may be complete mediating effects or partial mediating effects, some models were constructed for contrastive analysis. Among them, Model 1 assumed that all mediating effects were partial mediating effects. According to the test results of model 1, the paths with no significant effects were removed in sequence depending on the magnitude of their path coefficients to construct other models, respectively. Meanwhile, this study examined the indirect effects of different paths, with bias-corrected bootstrap method using MPLUS version 7.0.

Results

Validity analysis

This study used MPLUS version 7.0 when conducting confirmatory factor analysis to examine the discrimination validity of four variables. As shown in Table 1, the four-factor model yields an acceptable fit to the data (χ² = 412.36, df = 129, TLI = 0.91, CFI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.072, SRMR =0.063) and fits the data better than other models (Chi-square difference tests, all p < .001). Moreover, we calculated the square roots of AVE values of four variables. The results showed that the square roots of AVE values of four variables are all greater than their correlation coefficients (see in Table 2). Thus, the discrimination validity of four variables is good in this study.

Table 2.

Mean, standard deviations, and correlations.

Variables	M	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1. Gender	1.48	0.50
2. Age	2.40	0.91	0.06
3. Education	2.14	0.66	0.13**	0.09
4. Organizational tenure	2.42	1.20	0.16**	0.48***	0.13**
5. OC	3.42	0.81	0.01	−0.09	0.03	−0.02	0.84
6. PIS	4.03	0.69	−0.05	−0.01	0.03	−0.07	0.54***	0.73
7. FRCC	4.15	0.60	−0.12*	−0.03	−0.04	−0.05	0.38***	0.55***	0.73
8. EIB	3.87	0.66	−0.26***	0.10*	−0.10*	−0.04	0.24***	0.29***	0.47***	0.75

Note: N = 420; *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001; Gender, 1 = Male, 2 = Female; Age, 1 = 25 years old and below, 2 = 26–30 years old, 3 = 31–35 years old, 4 = 36 years old and above; Education, 1= college diploma and below, 2 = bachelor’s degree, 3 = master degree; Tenure, 1 = within 1 years, 2 = 1–2 years, 3 = 3–4 years, 4 = 5 years and above; Square roots of AVE values are on the diagonal.

Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis

As shown in Table 2, organizational compassion is positively correlated with perceived insider status and FRCC, perceived insider status is positively correlated with FRCC and employee innovative behavior, and organizational compassion is positively correlated with employee innovative behavior.

Hypotheses test

According to the test results of model 1, the paths PIS → EIB and OC → EIB were removed in sequence to construct model 2 and model 3, respectively. Table 3 summarizes the results of three models.

Table 3.

Fit indexes, path coefficients and indirect effects of the models.

	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3
Fit indexes
χ²	89.25	92.13	74.43
df	19	20	21
△χ²	14.82***	17.70***
TLI	0.80	0.80	0.86
CFI	0.88	0.88	0.91
RMSEA	0.094	0.093	0.078
Control variables
Gender	0.18	0.15	0.17
Age	0.25*	0.25*	0.25*
Education	−0.12**	−0.12**	−0.12**
Organizational tenure	−0.43*	−0.41*	−0.42*
Path coefficients
OC → PIS	0.50***	0.50***	0.50***
OC → FRCC	0.11**	0.11**	0.11**
PIS → FRCC	0.43***	0.43***	0.43***
FRCC → EIB	0.44***	0.44***	0.46***
PIS → EIB	0.03	0.03
OC → EIB	−0.00
Indirect effects
OC → PIS → FRCC	0.22***[0.16, 0.27]	0.22***[0.16, 0.27]	0.22***[0.16, 0.27]
PIS → FRCC → EIB	0.19***[0.12, 0.26]	0.19***[0.12, 0.26]	0.20***[0.14, 0.26]
OC → PIS → EIB	0.01[−0.05, 0.07]	0.01[−0.05, 0.07]
OC → FRCC → EIB	0.05* [0.01, 0.09]	0.05* [0.01, 0.09]	0.05* [0.01, 0.10]
OC → PIS → FRCC → EIB	0.10***[0.05, 0.14]	0.10***[0.05, 0.14]	0.10***[0.06, 0.14]

Note: N = 420; *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001; the values in square brackets are 95% CI.

From Table 3, we can see that model 3 fits the data better than other models (Chi-square difference tests, all p < .001), so choose Model 3 as the final model (see Figure 2). As shown in Model 3, the indirect effect of organizational compassion on FRCC through perceived insider status is 0.22 (p < .001), and the 95% confidence interval (CI) is [0.16, 0.27], excluding zero, so H1 is supported. The indirect effect of perceived insider status on employee innovative behavior through FRCC is 0.20 (p < .001), and the 95% confidence interval (CI) is [0.14, 0.26], excluding zero, so H2 is supported. The indirect effect of organizational compassion on employee innovative behavior through the serial mediating effects of perceived insider status and FRCC is 0.10 (p < .001), and the 95% confidence interval (CI) is [0.06, 0.14], excluding zero, so H3 is supported. From Figure 2, we can see that FRCC mediates the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior. Moreover, perceived insider status and FRCC serially mediate the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior.

Figure 2.

The path coefficients of cross-level mediation model. ^** p＜0.01, ^*** p＜0.001.

Discussion

Since suffering is pervasive in the workplace and also costly for the organizations (Dutton et al., 2014), organizational compassion increasingly becomes a crucial contextual factor to organizations. However, to the best of my knowledge, there is still no research examining how employee innovative behavior emerges in this organizational context up to date. Therefore, this study investigated the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior by introducing perceived insider status and FRCC as mediating variables.

Theoretical implications

This study has some theoretical implications. First, it provides the academia with a new interpretation mechanism for how employee innovative behavior emerges in the organizational context of compassion. Previous empirical studies have found that situational factors such as HRM practices (Bos-Nehles et al., 2017), high‐performance work system (Miao et al., 2020), ambidextrous organizational culture (Y. Liu et al., 2019), and organizational support (Z.-Q. Liu et al., 2015) play important roles in influencing employee innovative behavior, but neglect the role of organizational compassion. This study verified the value of organizational compassion to employee innovative behavior in the Chinese context. As the classic Chinese remarks saying: receiving drips of water when in need, and I shall return the kindness with a spring. Therefore, most Chinese employees can use positive work behaviors to return the compassion of organization, and innovative behavior is one of them.

Second, it provides evidence for the bright side of organizational compassion. Previous empirical studies found that compassion had positive effect on employees’ work attitudes and behaviors, but most of these studies took compassion as an individual level variable. For example, Moon et al. (2016) found that compassion at work improved positive work-related identity, which in turn promoted employees’ affective commitment toward their organizations and organizational citizenship behavior, and decreased turnover intention. Ko (2019) indicated that compassion experienced by the social workers had a positive effect on positive emotion and organizational identification. Moreover, Hur et al. (2016) revealed that compassion at work enhanced the creativity of service employees. Since creativity is the first stage of innovation (Amabile, 1996), this study further explored the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior and found a positive relationship between them. Since this study took compassion as an organizational level variable, this finding provides evidence for the positive effect of organizational compassion on employees’ work behaviors.

Third, it enriches the understanding of the antecedents of employee innovative behavior. The complexity of causality between phenomena makes it difficult for a single mediating model to fully reveal their internal mechanism, which highlights the importance of testing and estimating the serial mediating effect (Shu & Liang, 2015). Based on CAPS theory, this study showed that perceived insider status and FRCC played a serial mediating role in the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior, and FRCC is a proximal antecedent of employee innovative behavior. Although both perceived insider status and FRCC are positive cognitive-affective factors which have been empirically shown to be positively associated with proactive behavior (Z. X. Chen & Aryee, 2007; Fuller et al., 2006), they have certain differences in between. Stamper and Masterson (2002) proposed that employees who perceive themselves as insiders in their organizations are likely to consider themselves to be citizens of the firm, and thus accept the responsibilities of citizenship. So perceived insider status only links to responsibility, while FRCC is a direct assessment of responsibility that may drive an individual to bring about improvement, develop new procedures, and correct broader problems (Fuller et al., 2006). Therefore, comparing with perceived insider status, FRCC is a proximal antecedent of employee innovative behavior.

Practical implications

This study also has some practical implications. First, this study suggested that organizational compassion is an important antecedent of employee innovative behavior. Thus, in order to motivate employee innovative behavior, enterprises should pay attention to employees’ suffering, value the organizational compassion for employees, and take effective measures to improve the level of compassion within the organizations. Whether due to events in one’s personal life or organizationally induced, human suffering within organizations is inevitable (Dutton et al., 2014). Therefore, the executives of enterprises should introduce policies and measures to compassionate employees and establish a mechanism to notice, feel and respond to employees’ suffering, such as notifying other employees if someone in the organization is experiencing painful circumstances, rewarding and recognizing employees for their helping, hiring new employees who are more likely to behave compassionately at work, and so forth, so as to form an organizational culture of collective compassion for employees’ suffering within the enterprises. The middle and low-level managers should show attention to their subordinates, especially help the subordinates who suffer a lot to get out of the plight, so as to set the examples within the organizations, thus prompting more employees to compassionate their colleagues actively.

Second, this study revealed that perceived insider status is an important internal driving factor of employee innovative behavior. Thus, enterprises should intensify employees’ perceived insider status, so as to motivate employee innovative behavior. More specifically, enterprises should be good at creating a perception of insider status for employees, such as offering more organizational support for employees in their work and life, helping employees make good plans for their career development channels in the organization, giving employees access to more key information, encouraging employees to participate in enterprise decision-making. Managers should give employees more attention and mentoring, encourage employees to search for problem-solving methods initiatively, and enhance employees’ work autonomy, thus making employees fell that they are “insider” of the organization.

Third, this study found that FRCC is a proximal antecedent of employee innovative behavior. Thus, in order to motivate employee innovative behavior, enterprises should enhance employees’ FRCC to the organization. On the one hand, fostering strong FRCC begins with enterprises’ selection system (Fuller et al., 2006). When recruiting new employees, enterprises should not only pay attention to knowledge and skills, but also pay attention to sense of responsibility, so as to choose candidates with strong sense of responsibility. Moreover, selecting candidates who are more likely to take advantage of the opportunity (e.g., people with proactive personalities) is also helpful (Fuller et al., 2006). On the other hand, enterprises should strengthen the cultivation of employees’ FRCC. Enterprises should cultivate employees’ FRCC to enterprises by instilling and edifying employees’ sense of responsibility, setting good examples with strong FRCC among employees, or by managers’ behavioral demonstration, etc.

Limitations and future research directions

There are also several limitations in this study. First, this study only examined the mediating effects of perceived insider status and FRCC. However, according to CAPS theory (Mischel & Shoda, 1995), there are alternative cognitive-affective variables may mediate the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior. For example, previous studies found that experienced compassion at work was associated with higher levels of affective commitment (Lilius et al., 2008), and affective commitment was positively associated with employee innovative behavior (Nazir et al., 2019), so affective commitment may mediate the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior. Future research may bring in some other cognitive-affective variables as potential mediating variables for novel theoretical implications.

Second, this study only examined simple linear outcomes of organizational compassion. Quite a lot studies found that compassion had positive effect on employees’ work attitudes and behaviors (e.g., Chu, 2016; Hur et al., 2016; Ko, 2019; Moon et al., 2016). Yet, there are many studies found that compassion had negative consequences for compassion provider who might experience compassion fatigue (Sinclair et al., 2017) and moral distress (Halifax, 2011), and Bloom (2016) appealed rational compassion. Therefore, there may be a non-linear relationship between organizational compassion and its outcome variables, and future research should explore it.

Third, the data in this study were cross-sectional and self-reported by employees, which may affect the reliability of this study in deducing causalities between variables to some extent. However, it may not be an issue in this study since employee innovative behavior is unlikely to be the cause of organizational compassion and FRCC, and self-report method is an effective method for empirical research (e.g., Zhang & Chen, 2012). In order to improve the reliability of the research conclusions, future research should adopt the longitudinal research design, and collect the data of different variables respectively from the employees themselves, their peers or superiors.

Conclusion

This study explored the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior by introducing perceived insider status and FRCC as mediating variables. Findings showed that FRCC mediates the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior. Moreover, perceived insider status and FRCC serially mediate the relationship between organizational compassion and employee innovative behavior. This study has significant theoretical implications as it provides the academia with a new interpretation mechanism for how employee innovative behavior emerges in the organizational context of compassion. This study also has significant practical implications as it promotes organizations to think about how to drive more employee innovative behaviors through enhancing organizational capacity for compassion. Future research should continuously explore the effect of organizational compassion on employee innovative behavior by bringing in some other cognitive-affective variables as potential mediating variables and adopting longitudinal research design, which will enrich the research on the effects of organizational compassion.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Professor Fu Yang for his helpful comments on this paper. The authors also thanks all the anonymous participants in this study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: A project supported by scientific research fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department (No. 20B213).

Ethical Approval

This study was carried out in accordance with the approval of ethics committee of Hunan University of Science and Technology. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

ORCID iD

Yungui Guo

Author Biographies

Yungui Guo is an associate professor and researcher at the School of Business at Hunan University of Science and Technology, China.

Yanting Zhu is a PHD at the School of Labor and Human Resources at Renmin University of China, China.

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