The relationship between job involvement, intrinsic motivation and suggestion behavior

This study was undertaken to investigate: (1) the relations between the job involvement and intrinsic work motivation of hourly workers, and the number of cost saving ideas they generate; and (2) the impact of hourly workers willingness to submit their ideas on the relationship between the number of ideas they generate and the number of ideas they formally submit as suggestions. Participants were 304 hourly workers in a furniture manufacturing plant in the Northeast. Job attitude data was collected by survey. Data for the variable suggestion contribution was calculated from detailed company records of the suggestions submitted by the employees over the 26 month period following survey administration. A log transformation of the suggestion data was included in the analyses. Both job involvement and intrinsic work motivation were positively correlated with idea generation. Idea generation was found to be significantly correlated to both suggestion contribution and the log transformation of suggestion contribution. The willingness of employees to submit their ideas was found to moderate the strength of the relationship between idea generation and suggestion contribution, but not the form of the relationship between idea generation and suggestion contribution. It was suggested that future investigations of employee creativity keep in mind the important role of the involvement of the employee in the process of generating suggestions. It was also suggested that future research consider the willingness of employees to submit ideas as a critical aspect of the creative process. It was noted that failure to consider the potential impact of employee willingness to submit ideas could lead to a failure to find relationships where they actually exist.