Political Support Networks, Relational Energy, and Employee Innovation Implementation

Abstract

Although affect has been identified as a factor likely to impact the success of innovation, little research has been done on the relationship between affect and employee innovation implementation performance. We address this oversight by adopting a social network approach to examine relational energy (i.e., how energized one person is when interacting with another) as a form of high activation positive affect likely to influence innovation implementation. We test our hypotheses using a sample of researchers in a large pharmaceutical research firm (Study 1). Our results indicate that the number of people an employee goes to for political support who report being energized by that employee is positively related to innovation implementation performance. In contrast, the number of people an employee seeks out for political support who are not energized by that employee has negative implications for innovation implementation. The network prominence of an individual’s energized network contacts also relates to implementation performance, with this effect being stronger for employees not in a managerial position. A scenario-based experiment (Study 2) provides support for the causal linkage between feeling energized by a co-worker and one’s willingness to provide instrumental help to the co-worker. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.