关键词: 知识型员工, 非正式地位, 创新行为, 创新期望, 差错氛围

Abstract:     Nowadays, the development of enterprises is gradually transforming from being driven by factors and investment to being driven by innovation. In an organization, for the professionals engaged in management, R&D and other departments, supporting professionals with in-depth professional skills and the middle-level and senior managers, these knowledge employees completing their work through intellectual input, creativity and authority work as the important knowledge carriers and innovation subjects of enterprises, and their innovation behavior is the power source of enterprise innovation, development and competition. Therefore, how to motivate employees′ innovative behavior has always been a hot topic of theoretical research. In the previous studies, employees′ innovation behavior was mainly discussed from two aspects: psychological variables(personality characteristics, psychological environment) and external environment(leadership style, organizational atmosphere). However, the employees′ innovation behavior in not only the result of individual or external environment acting independently, but also is determined by employees′ interaction with different subjects and environmental perception in the shared scenario, but there is a lack of such relevant research.
     Therefore, taking knowledge employees as the research object and based on the social identity theory, this study introduces innovation expectation and error climate into the analysis framework of the relationship between informal status and innovation behavior, builds a model of error atmosphere regulating innovation expectation and acting as a mediation between informal status and innovation behavior, and collects the questionnaire data from 16 enterprises in normal operation including public management and social organizations, science and technology service industry, financial industry, manufacturing industry, culture/health industry and others in Beijing, Hebei, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shanghai, Fujian and Hunan, etc. through the questionnaire survey method. In order to the guarantee the quality of the data questionnaire, the questionnaire objects were strictly screened in collection to ensure the personnel who filled the questionnaires to be knowledge employees within the enterprise. To avoid homology bias, the questionnaires were fully numbered and were collected in two rounds at an interval of two months. In the first round, the data in various dimensions such as innovation expectation, error atmosphere and informal status of the employees was mainly collected, and in the second round, the data in all dimensions such as innovation behavior evaluated by direct leaders was mainly collected, the content of the questionnaire was strictly reviewed, and 461 valid questionnaires were filtered out from 619 collected questionnaires for empirical analysis.  
    In theory, this study further reveals that there are incentive methods other than material incentives in innovation behavior. In terms of knowledge employees, compared with those for non-knowledge employees, the incentive methods for them should be different, and the incentive methods matching individual attributes and organizational context should be implemented to stimulate their innovative behavior. Based on the research conclusion in this paper, incentive measures should be designed from the perspectives of error atmosphere, innovation expectation and others to promote the innovation behavior of knowledge employees. Different from non-knowledge employees, as a group with stronger needs of for self-realization in organizations, they are more sensitive to the organizational environment, and the good organization environment such as error atmosphere can effectively promote the knowledge employees to conduct innovation behavior. However, the simple organization environment fails to fully explain the innovation incentive path of knowledge-based employees. Compared with non-knowledge employees, knowledge workers often get more innovation expectations, which come from inside and outside the organization. Furthermore, the innovation expectation of knowledge employees is often an attainable goal, while the non-knowledge employees are mostly engaged in the allocated task and step-by-step work, so it is difficult to expect more innovation in their work. Therefore, for the knowledge employees under more pressure from expectations, it is of important practical significance for the innovation development of enterprises to give innovation expectation and create a good error atmosphere so as to promote the innovation behavior of knowledge employees.
    This study also has important practical significance for the management of the knowledge employees. Innovation is one of the core competencies of an enterprise, and the knowledge employees are the main force for the enterprise innovation. How to stimulate the innovation behavior of the knowledge employees is crucial for the managers. Through the empirical results, we put forward the management suggestions as follows: 
    Firstly, this study finds that the knowledge employees with high informal status are more likely to have innovative behavior. Therefore, when encouraging the employees′ innovation behavior, an organization should focus on the establishment of the employees′ informal status. The knowledge employees have more desire for status compared with non-knowledge employees, and they have higher personal quality and better professional ability than non-knowledge employees. In consideration of the lack of specific measurement standards for informal status, there should be an effective setting and management system to grant knowledge employees informal status. For knowledge employees with little innovation, the organization should lead the knowledge employees to conduct innovation behavior according to its current needs, grant them corresponding informal status, and give them sufficient rewards in spirit, so that the knowledge employees can better conduct innovation behavior. 
    Secondly, this study shows that innovation expectation acts as an intermediary in the process of informal status promoting innovation behavior. Therefore, for the knowledge with fewer innovation behaviors, the organization can appropriately improve their innovation expectation and encourage or recognize their enthusiasm for innovation with practical actions, such as sending the organizational signals of encouragement, protection, feedback, recognition and return to knowledge employees. For the knowledge employees with higher informal status, the organization should appropriately let them take over tasks needing more innovation behaviors. Higher organizational innovation expectation will stimulate the innovation motivation of the knowledge employees and promote more innovation behaviors while continuously consolidating the social identity of the knowledge employees from other members.
    Thirdly, the results of this study show that error atmosphere can significantly regulate the generation of innovation behavior. Therefore, an organization should create a good error atmosphere, provide a strong error-tolerant guarantee for the implementation of innovation behavior of knowledge employees, encourage the employees to exchange and learn from each other on innovation and improve their innovation in the error atmosphere, and let the knowledge employees feel more relaxed when implementing innovation behavior. 

Key words: knowledge employees, informal status, innovation behavior, innovation expectation, error management atmosphere