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Service Innovation in the IT Service Industry: Social Influence and Relationship Exchange Perspectives

First, within a stressful work environment, positive interpersonal relationships and
support resources can provide employees with information about work attitude and role
perceptions to reduce uncertainty and strengthen their sense of social adjustment to
conform to others’ thoughts and behaviors (Pitesa and Thau, 2013). Second, drawing upon
the perspective of workplace exchange relationships, employees may perceive a normative
obligation to reciprocate the support received from their work teams. This reciprocal
interaction often manifests as conformity to the expectations of others, which is seen as a

strategy to garner social approval (Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004; Kim, LePine, Zhang, and
Baer, 2022). Homburg et al. (2010) also argue that support resources in the workplace can
affect social influence among the team members, in turn impacting individual behavior and
job performance. Therefore, we adopt the perspective of Cialdini and Goldstein (2004) to
divide social influence into informational influence (i.e., value congruence), and normative
influence (i.e., felt obligation), advancing our understanding of the underlying mechanism
behind the causal result.

2.2 EML → Value Congruence → Innovation Intention
Zhang and Bartol (2010) adopt Ahearne et al. (2005)’s work to provide a psychology-
based definition of EML, specifically referring to the implementing conditions that enable
leaders to share power with members. These conditions include: enhanced meanings

Other-
Orientation
Empowering Value
Leadership Congruence

Innovation Innovation
Intention Performance

Team-Member Felt Obligation
Exchange
1. Age
2. Education
3. Company Tenure

Figure 1 Conceptual Model

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