MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY LA ANH DUC ANTECEDENTS OF TEAM INNOVATION IN RETAIL SERVICES: EVIDENCE FROM VIETNAM PHD THESIS HO CHI MINH CITY - 2022 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY LA ANH DUC ANTECEDENTS OF TEAM INNOVATION IN RETAIL SERVICES: EVIDENCE FROM VIETNAM Major: Business Administration Code: 9340101 PHD THESIS SUPERVISOR: ASSOC. NGUYEN DINH THO HO CHI MINH CITY - 2022 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT In completing my thesis for PhD research, I was very fortunate to have support from many people to whom I am greatly indebted. Firstly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, for his invaluable support and guidance. This work would never have been possible without his insightful comments and advice.
Secondly, I would like to thank all of my teachers from ISB PhD program for their important assistance concerning to methodologies, philosophy of science, research and life issues during my research period. I also would like to express my appreciation to my colleagues, my PhD friends and many related people for supporting me to undertake this research. Finally, I am extremely grateful to my parents and my family members for their endless love, care and patience. Without my family‟s support and encouragement, I would not become who I am today.
Ho Chi Minh City, July 2022 i ABSTRACT Team innovation can help contemporary organizations create competitive advantage, making them survive, and subsequently growing in the fast-changing and unpredictable market. This thesis aimed to explore different antecedents of team innovation through three studies conducted in retail services in Vietnam. Firstly, drawing upon the ambidextrous leadership for innovation, Study 1 investigates the role of opening and closing leadership behaviors in both team exploratory and exploitative learning, and subsequently in team innovation. Results based on a survey data set collected from 296 team leaders show that opening leadership behavior positively affects team exploratory learning and closing leadership behavior underlies team exploitative learning.
Further, the interaction between opening and closing leadership behaviors positively affects both team exploratory and exploitative learning. Finally, these two types of team learning enhance team innovation Secondly, employing social exchange theory in teams, Study 2 examines the role of shared team psychological contract fulfillment and team proactive personality in the relationship between inclusive leadership and team innovation. Results, based on a survey dataset collected from 300 team leaders in retail services in Vietnam, demonstrated that shared team psychological contract fulfillment mediated the above relationship. Interestingly, team proactive personality positively moderated the effect of inclusive leadership on shared team psychological contract fulfillment.
Finally, using the psychological capital (PsyCap) theory, Study 3 investigates the impact of team PsyCap on team innovation. Further, Study 3 also examines the mediating role of team learning, including exploratory and exploitative learning, in team innovation. A sample of 272 team leaders of firms in Vietnam was surveyed to validate the measures via confirmatory factor analysis and to test the model and hypotheses using structural equation modeling. The results demonstrate that team PsyCap has a positive effect on team innovation.
Further, team exploratory learning mediates the relationship between team PsyCap and team innovation; however, team ii exploitative learning does not. Although team exploitative learning is explained by team PsyCap, it does not enhance team innovation. The overall findings of this thesis provide a number of theoretical contributions to the literature on team innovation. Firstly, Study 1 extends the current research on ambidextrous leadership, team learning and team innovation.
Secondly, the findings of Study 2 provide further evidence to confirm the predictive power of inclusive leadership at the team level by verifying the role of inclusive leadership in shared team psychological contract fulfillment and innovation. Finally, Study 3 further confirms the predictive power of PsyCap at the team level by verifying the role of team PsyCap in team learning and innovation. This finding of Study 3 signals that to achieve innovation, teams should pursue explorative learning. The findings of this thesis suggest a number of implications for practitioners.
Firstly, the findings of Study 1 identify the importance of firms investing in training team leaders to improve both opening and closing leadership behaviors in order to foster exploratory and exploitative learning activities in their teams. Secondly, the results of Study 2 point to the potential for leadership training interventions to improve inclusive leadership behaviors in order to foster the needs and attitudes of their team members. Finally, the results of Study 3 highlight the importance of fostering team PsyCap to enhance team-level outcomes including team learning and innovation. Firms should create a social context that could help in interacting and communicating among team members, which in turn leads to share the perceptions regarding psychological state of development.
Study 3 believes that the effect of team PsyCap in shaping agreement between employees in team could help teams get through difficult times and respond more positive to today‟s more complex job requirements and increasing demand for change and idea generating and idea implementing. Keywords – ambidextrous leadership, inclusive leadership, team psychological capital, team exploratory learning, team exploitative learning, psychological contract fulfillment, team proactive personality, team innovation, Vietnam. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviations Meaning AVE Average variance extracted B Unstandardized regression weight β Standardized regression weight BC Bias-corrected bootstrap estimate CAGR Compound annual growth rate CFA Confirmatory factor analysis CFI Comparative fit index CR Composite reliability EFA Exploratory factor analysis GFI Goodness of fit index HCMC Ho Chi Minh City M Means p p-value PsyCap Psychological capital RMSEA Root mean square error of approximation SD Standard deviations SE Standard error SEM Structural equation modeling SET Social exchange theory iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Overall model of thesis.
Conceptual model of Study 1. Interaction effect between opening and closing leadership behaviors on team exploratory learning. Interaction effect between opening and closing leadership behaviors on team exploitative learning. Conceptual model of Study 2.
Conceptual model of Study 3 .62 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1. A summary of empirical studies on the relationship between leadership styles and team innovation. Means (M), standard deviations (SD), and standardized CFA loadings () of items of Study 1. Correlations between constructs of Study 1.
SEM results of Study 1. A brief summary of empirical studies on the relationship between inclusive leadership and innovation. Means (M), standard deviations (SD), and standardized CFA loadings () of items of Study 2. Correlations between constructs of Study 2.
SEM results of Study 2. A summary of empirical studies on the relationship between team PsyCap and team outcomes. Means (M), standard deviations (SD), and standardized CFA loadings () of items of Study 3. Correlations between constructs of Study 3.
SEM results of Study 3 .72 vi CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .iv LIST OF FIGURES .v LIST OF TABLES .5 Structure of the thesis. LITERATURE REVIEW AND OVERALL MODEL .1 The theory of ambidextrous leadership for innovation .2 Social exchange theory in groups .3 Psychological capital theory. TEAM INNOVATION IN RETAIL SERVICES: THE ROLE OF AMBIDEXTROUS LEADERSHIP AND TEAM LEARNING .2 Theoretical background and hypotheses .2 Conceptual model and hypotheses .2 Design and sample .4 Data analysis and results .2 Structural results and hypothesis testing .5 Discussion and implications .3 Limitations and future directions.
INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP AND INNOVATION: THE ROLE OF SHARED TEAM PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT FULFILLMENT AND TEAM PROACTIVE PERSONALITY. Theoretical background and hypotheses .1 SET in teams .2 Conceptual model and hypotheses .1 Design and sample. Data analysis and results .2 Common method bias .3 Structural results and hypothesis testing. Discussion and implications .3 Limitations and future directions.
TEAM PSYCHOLOGICAL CAPITAL AND INNOVATION: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF TEAM LEARNING.2 Theoretical background and hypotheses .1 Design and sample .4 Data analysis and results .2 Common method bias .3 Structural results and hypothesis testing .5 Discussion and Conclusions .4 Limitations and future directions .82 PUBLICATIONS RELATED TO THE THESIS. Vietnamese questionnaire of focus group. Result of focus group. English questionnaire for Study 1.
Vietnamese questionnaire for Study 1. English questionnaire for Study 2. Vietnamese questionnaire for Study 2. English questionnaire for Study 3.
Vietnamese questionnaire for Study 3. Data analysis for Study 1. Data analysis for Study 2. Data analysis for Study 3 .1 Research gaps Team innovation largely refers as “including both the development and implementation of novelty” (van Kinppenberg, 2017, p.
Team innovation can help contemporary organizations create competitive advantage, making them survive, and subsequently growing in the fast-changing and unpredictable market (Acar, Tarakci, & van Knippenberg, 2019). Some main perspectives in team innovation research were the knowledge integration perspective, the team climate perspective, the aggregation of individual inputs perspective, and the leadership perspective (Hülsheger, Anderson, & Salgado, 2009; Rosing, Frese, & Bausch, 2011; Anderson, Potočnik, & Zhou, 2014; van Knippenberg, 2017). Leadership- innovation has long been a fruitful area for exploring and exploiting our existing knowledge especially at the team level of analysis (Rosing et al., 2011; Hughes et al. Prior empirical research linking leadership and team innovation has implicated a variety of leadership styles such as transformational leadership (Jiang & Chen, 2018), authentic leadership (Černe, Jaklič, & Škerlavaj, 2013), shared leadership (Hoch, 2013), servant leadership (Yoshida et al., 2014), and ambidextrous leadership (Zacher & Rosing, 2015), to name a few.
Each leadership style may enhance some social processes (e., team learning), and thus facilitate or inhibit team innovation in some specific boundary conditions. These empirical studies with specific leadership styles, however, fail to identify some meaningful gaps. First, to the best of our knowledge, research on the role of ambidextrous leadership in team learning and team innovation, not only in transitioning economies like Vietnam but also in advanced economies, has largely been ignored. In addition, a new trend in the retail service industry is to shift its focus on building long-term customer relationships instead of short-term sales.
Retail service teams may be able to go out of their way to enhance their service quality such as providing 1 individualized attention to their customers, thus, opening opportunities for team innovation (Subramony & Pugh, 2015). The concept of ambidextrous leadership is introduced as “the ability to foster both explorative and exploitative behaviors in followers by increasing or reducing variance in their behavior and flexibly switching between those behaviors” (Rosing et al. Some prior studies that link ambidextrous leadership behaviors with innovation have shown a variety of mediating ways through employee exploration and exploitation behaviors when analyzed at the individual level (Zacher et al. Others have explored how differences in team performance can be explained by team leadership, team learning and team psychological safety (e., Edmondson, 1999; Kostopoulos & Bozionelos, 2011; Zacher & Rosing, 2015) with some attempting to explain team innovation by team social processes and leadership (Hülsheger et al., 2009; Rosing et al., 2011; Anderson et al.
Second, inclusive leaders might also play an important role in motivating our diversified employees to innovate (Randel et al. Inclusive leadership is aset of positive leader behaviors characterized by openness, accessibility, availability, belongingness and uniqueness in interactions with followers (Carmeli et al., 2010; Randel et al. Inclusive leadership directly enhances several job outcomes, such as taking charge behavior (Zeng et al., 2020), voice behavior (Guo et al., 2020), prosocial rule breaking (Wang & Shi, 2021), and psychological distress (Ahmed et al. The role of inclusive leadership in creativity and innovation at different levels in organizations (organizational, team, and individual) has also been investigated by some researchers (e., Choi et al., 2017; Gong et al., 2021; Javed et al., 2018; Javed et al., 2019; Siyal et al., 2021; Ye et al.
However, research on the role of inclusive leadership and innovation at the team level is still scarce.
