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Introduction
Organizational innovation is an underlying factor that assists companies to survive in a rapidly changing world (Pundt et al., 2010) and it is perceived to be one of the means of achieving organizational success and competitiveness (Jafri, 2010) because it helps organizations outperform competitors, excite customers, and build new product portfolios (Cingoz and Akdogan, 2011). Thus, today’s organizations require more creative and novel ideas from employees who can contribute to innovation performance. We believe that it is not just organizations that benefit from employees’ innovative behavior but employees also benefit from their own innovativeness. Individuals engaging in creative activities have the chance to develop their competencies and task mastery (Amabile, 1996). What is more, individuals who display innovative behavior are more likely to receive rewards for their innovativeness and to be promoted (Kim et al., 2009). Moreover, the innovativeness of employees influences their social networking and social status (Greenberger and Strasser, 1986). Because there is a high demand for innovative individuals by organizations and every organization tries to retain innovative people, innovative individuals have a better chance to maintain their positions in the face of downsizing and find new jobs (Noe et al., 2011). Therefore, the significance of innovativeness at both the individual (Jansen et al., 2006; Nayir, 2014; Tang et al., 2013) and organizational levels has been widely acknowledged by previous studies (Woodman et al., 1993; Janssen et al., 2004; Van de Ven, 1986).
Many previous studies on innovation indicated the critical role of organizational structure such as centralization (Polansky and Hughes, 1986), formalization (Pierce and Delbecq, 1977) and integration (Tang et al., 2013) in influencing organizational innovation performance.
According to Van de Ven (1986), the basis for organizational innovation is found in the individuals who introduce, modify, and implement ideas. Therefore, organizations rely on employee creativity and innovativeness to increase organizational innovation performance (Cingoz and Akdogan, 2011). Hence, organizational innovation performance is not directly influenced by organizational structure; instead, employee innovative behavior can be a missing link between these two factors. Thus, we assume that employee innovative behavior mediates the associations amongst structural factors such as centralization, formalization, integration, and organizational innovation performance. In other words, when all decisions are made by superiors (Damanpour,...