Leader strategies for motivating innovation in individuals: a systematic review

Eleftherios K. Soleas ()
Additional contact information
Eleftherios K. Soleas: Queen’s University

Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 2020, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-28

Abstract: Abstract Innovation is a topic of intense interest and is seen as key to confronting the vast majority of issues facing humanity. To consolidate the knowledge about approaches promoting innovation, this study conducted a systematic review integrating an all-database (n = 375) search through EBSCOhost completed on April 6th, 2019 in addition to search engine use. Three hundred three studies were full-text reviewed yielding 82 final studies eligible for the inclusion in findings extraction. The findings were synthesized and then organized into the Expectancy–value–cost (EVC) motivation framework to isolate promotive and hindering factors. It is clear that there is an unbalanced primacy in the innovation literature in favor of business and corporate settings with very little representation from the arts or social justice sectors. There is also a common trend of using surveys of individuals in organizations within a single discipline, while interviews are rare. The paucity of studying costs of innovation in the literature is symptomatic of the primarily positive psychology approach taken by studies, rather than a framework like EVC which also considers detractive factors like costs. Numerous studies provide support for the notion that more internal motivations like intrinsic (e.g., interest) and attainment (e.g., importance, fulfillment) were more influential than external motivators like rewards as targets of strategies. Leaders should focus, whenever possible, on topics that engaged curiosity, interest, and satisfaction and, if they choose to use rewards, should focus their strategies to give related rewards; otherwise, they risk sundering the internal motivation to innovate for already interested workers.

Keywords: Innovation; Expectancy–value theory; Systematic review; Leader approaches; Innovation education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s13731-020-00120-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joiaen:v:9:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1186_s13731-020-00120-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://innovation-e ... ip.springeropen.com/

DOI: 10.1186/s13731-020-00120-w

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship is currently edited by Elias G. Carayannis

More articles in Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().