Abstract:    Innovation is particularly important for companies facing digital transformation. Self-differentiation, as a personality trait amenable to intervention, plays a vital role in employees striving for innovation by changing to counter change. Based on the resource conservation theory, this paper explores the internal mechanism between self-differentiation and employee innovative behavior from the inner and interpersonal perspectives. By establishing a structural equation model, this paper discusses how self-differentiation affects employee innovative behavior, and tests the mediating effect of psychological distance in the process of self-differentiation affecting employee innovative behavior. Questionnaire surveys were conducted among companies in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei to serve as an empirical sample. SPSS and AMOS were conducted to test the hypotheses.
     The empirical results show that self-differentiation (intrapersonal level and interpersonal level) positively affects employee innovative behavior. Self-differentiation (intrapersonal level and interpersonal level) indirectly affects employee innovative behavior through the mediating role of psychological distance. The results of this study give credence to the mechanism of self-differentiation on employee innovative behavior, and help managers appreciate the amenability of self-differentiation to intervention, which has important implications for the management practice of motivating employee innovative behavior.
     This study holds important practical significance for the management of employees at different levels of differentiation. It is imperative for managers to motivate employees with high self-differentiation level to give full play to their advantages and guide employees with low self-differentiation level to tap their potential. Based on the empirical results, this paper puts forward the following management suggestions: (1) Faced with the pressure of innovation brought by the digital age, highly self-differentiated employees are able to remain calm, think rationally and actively seek effective coping strategies. Managers should give such employees enough psychological security, provide them with professional technology and a platform to demonstrate their abilities, create an organizational atmosphere of active exploration and communication within the enterprise, and give full play to the advantages of highly self-differentiated employees. (2) Employees with low self-differentiation tend to react more emotionally. They have less control over their emotions at work, and exhibit submissive or domineering behavior in relationships. For such employees, on the one hand, managers should understand their working status in real time, control their role load and work pressure, reduce work-family imbalance caused by insufficient work resources, and reduce stress in time. On the other hand, managers should give recognition and support to their work performance, create a good sense of psychological security for employees, and reduce their concerns about carrying out out-of-role behavior, so that employees can overcome the resistance caused by risk aversion mentality when resources are insufficient. What′s more, work, in some sense, is a continuation of family life. As such, self-differentiation formed in family life may affect individual development at work. Managers should focus on helping employees keep a balance between work and family and normalizing the relationship by setting up a formal family support system (goodwill family policy, telecommuting, flexible work arrangements, child care services, etc.). Managers can also take the initiative to show low self-differentiation level employees informal family support by, say, helping them fulfill family obligations and balance work and family, so as to strengthen mutual commitment and trust between the company and the employee and redress resource imbalance caused by low self-differentiation or insufficient resources.

Key words: self-differentiation, psychological distance, employee innovation behavior