Measuring Employees’ Communication for Innovation: The Employee Innovation Potential Scale

Abstract. This research aimed to introduce and validate a new self-report measure of organizational communication related to early stages of employee-driven innovation – the Employee Innovation Potential Scale (EIPS). Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were performed consecutively on two samples of employees from Serbian companies ( N = 723). The final form of the EIPS comprises 25 items and measures four factors: insight into company problems and their causes, company values employees' ideas, idea communication, and interest in company improvements. Employees who shared more ideas had higher scores on all four factors compared to employees who did not share any ideas or just a few, which confirmed factors’ criterion validity. Moreover, employees who shared more global and radical ideas had higher scores on the first two factors. The results supported the four-factor solution of EIPS and its criterion validity.