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NTU Management Review Vol. 33 No. 2 Aug. 2023

1. Introduction

Accumulated research has focused on understanding the process of organization
innovation development and improvement, and established that innovation contributes
to better performance and effectiveness in organizations (Blichfeldt and Faullant, 2021;
Lehrer, Wieneke, vom Brocke, Jung, and Seidel, 2018; Skålén and Gummerus, 2023).

This process is also referred to as knowledge integration and creation, both of which
are beneficial in terms of organizational capability (Lin, Lu, Ozer, and Tang, 2023).
More importantly, the topic of individual innovative behavior as a significant source of
momentum for organization innovation has gradually gained attention in both academic
and practical fields (Kör, Wakkee, and van der Sijde, 2021; Scott and Bruce, 1994).
Individual innovative behavior in the IT service industry is defined as the extent to which
engineers exert themselves to develop, adopt, and implement novel ideas for products

and work methods (Scott and Bruce, 1994; Yuan and Woodman, 2010). Prior studies
have viewed individual innovation as an important asset that enables firms to succeed
in dynamic business environments (Anderson, Potočnik, and Zhou, 2014; Chuang, Lee,
Chen, and Yen, 2019).
Although prior researchers from various fields have investigated how employees
innovate, the majority of these studies tend to explain innovative behavior mainly from
the perspectives of individual motivation, ability, and self-image (e.g., social cognitive
theory, motivation theory, and role identity theory). For example, some studies find that
individual innovation will thrive when one believes that he or she possesses the knowledge

and skills to generate novel outcomes (Gong, Huang, and Farh, 2009; Liao, Liu, and
Loi, 2010; Zhang and Zhou, 2014). However, these prior studies neglect that coworkers’
and supervisors’ expectations, thoughts, and behaviors can act as social influence within
groups, positively impacting individual behavior (Homburg, Wieseke, and Kuehnl, 2010).
Additionally, social influence also helps to demonstrate the fundamental impact of social
factors on human decision-making process and behavior (Li, Shao, Wang, Fang, Gong,
and Li, 2022). Therefore, our study aims to explore new insights into the underlying

mechanism with social influence theory to gain a better understanding of individual
innovation within the IT service industry in Taiwan.
Despite of the importance of individual innovative behavior for IT service firms{
particularly engineers of these firms primarily working on group-based projects, prior
studies also fail to look after another influential mechanism formed by relational

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