Empowerment

Sampling and data collection

This study uses a questionnaire survey to conduct empirical research and collect data, with industrial workers in China as the research object. The employees selected for this study refer mainly to technical employees, junior managers, middle managers, senior managers and employees engaged mainly in product design, research and development and testing. Such employees are the main members of enterprise innovation and play an important role in an enterprise. According to unified standards and requirements, the questionnaire is mainly distributed online through the WenJuanXing (WJX) data collection platform. WJX is an online research platform based in Changsha, China. With questionnaires, the platform collects data for economic management, psychology and education; provides powerful data storage and analysis functions; and digs deeply into the value of the data. Provide convenient data collection tools for scientific researchers.

In this survey, a total of 415 questionnaires are distributed, and 290 valid questionnaires are obtained, with an effective rate of 70%. The descriptive statistics show that in the effective sample, the male respondents account for 45.9%, and the female respondents account for 54.1%. For the age distribution, the respondents 25 years old and below account for 33.4%, those between the ages of 26 and 35 years account for 45.2%, those between the ages of 36 and 45 years account for 16.2% and those 46 years old and above account for 5.2%. The unmarried respondents account for 60.3%, and the married respondents account for 39.7%. Those employed for less than 2 years account for 24.8%, and those employed for 2 to 5 years account for 26.6%. The respondents employed for 6 to 9 years account for 23.4%, and those employed for over 10 years account for 25.2%. For the education distribution, the respondents who reached junior college and below account for 19%, those with a bachelor's degree account for 70%, those with a master's degree account for 7.9% and those with a doctoral degree and above account for 3.1%. For job distribution, technical staff account for 32.1%, junior management staff account for 35.5%, middle management staff account for 27.6% and senior management staff account for 4.8%. The respondents with an income below RMB 4,000 account for 21%, those with an income of RMB 4,001–5,000 account for 16.2%, those with an income of RMB 5,001–6,000 account for 11%, those with an income of RMB 6,001–7,000 account for 9.7%, those with an income of RMB 7,001–8,000 account for 14.5% and those with an income of RMB 8,000 or more account for 27.6%. The basic information of the survey object is shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Demographic characteristics of valid sample.

Questionnaire and measurements

The measurement questionnaire is based mainly on mature scales, On the basis of the research results of scholars, 18 influencing factors of employee innovation behavior were extracted from the literature, and the initial measurement scale was formed. and the research design is carried out in strict accordance with the translation-back translation procedure. On this basis, appropriate adjustments are made according to the Chinese context. In order to verify and supplement the existing research, representative enterprises were selected for in-depth interviews. Firstly, We state the understanding of relevant scholars on the connotation, extension and influencing factors of employee innovation behavior, and ask them to explain whether the existing research results can be established in the enterprise based on the actual situation of the enterprise. Through interviews, the factors extracted from the literature were confirmed in the enterprise.

Based on this interview, a presurvey is conducted, and the questionnaire is revised and improved based on the presurvey feedback to create the formal questionnaire, except for the basic situation of the staff. In addition, the influence of leadership empowering behavior and thriving at work on employees' innovation behavior is investigated. The questionnaire uses a seven-point Likert scale, with 1 representing "completely disagree" and 7 representing "completely agree".

The questionnaire is revised based on the leadership empowering behavior scale compiled by Arnold et al., Konczak et al., Slåtten et al., Hassi, Naqshbandi et al. combining the characteristics of employees' innovation behavior. Based on the feedback and presurvey results, three items, that is, Personal Development Support, Participative Decision Making and Delegation of Authority, are determined. This study draws on the scale of Shirom, Porath et al., Duan et al. to create the vigor and learning. Moreover, this study draws on the scale of Porath et al., Spreitzer et al., Spanuth and Wald to measure employees' innovation behavior. The last measurement items of the five constructs are listed in the Appendix.

Extraction of main factors

Numerical KMO calculation and Bartlett spherical test were performed for sample data. The KMO value of the scale was 0.909, indicating that the sample adequacy was high and suitable for progressive factor analysis. The \(x^2\) value of Bartlett spherical test was 1637.339 (153 degrees of freedom), and the accompanying probability was 0.000, less than 0.05, indicating that there was correlation between the items of the scale, which was suitable for factor analysis.

The principal component analysis method was used to extract the main factors, and the factors with eigenvalue greater than 1 were selected. The maximum variance method was used to rotate the factors, and the items that were self-contained as one factor and the load values of two or more factors were all less than 0.5 were deleted. Two factor analyses were conducted. A total of 5 items were deleted, namely QPDS3, QPDS5, QTW3, QTW4 and QTW5. After the items were deleted, the KMO value of the scale was 0.896, the \(x^2\) value of Bartlett spherical test was 1209.206 (with 78 degrees of freedom), and the accompanying probability was 0.000, less than 0.05. It shows that there are common factors among the correlation matrices of the mother, indicating that the data are suitable for factor analysis. A total of 4 factors are extracted, and the cumulative variance contribution rate is 51.975%, which can explain most of the structure of the original variable and reflect most of the information of the original variable. Thus, four main factors of influencing factors of employee innovation behavior are obtained. Exploratory factor analysis was completed.

Reliability and validity tests

Cronbach's α reliability coefficient was used to test the internal consistency of the scale. After deleting 5 items, the Cronbach's α coefficient of the scale as a whole was 0.870, indicating that its reliability and stability were good and its reliability was high. The Cronbach ‘α of the four subscales is greater than 0.6, indicating that they also have good reliability.

This study uses SPSS 24.0 to test the reliability and validity of Personal Development Support, Participative Decision Making, Delegation of Authority, Vigor, Learning and Innovation Behavior, and the results are presented in Table 2. It can be seen from Table 2 that the composite reliability (CR) of each latent variable is greater than 0.75, and the Cronbach's α coefficient values are all greater than the recognized lowest level of 0.6, thereby indicating that the scales demonstrate satisfactory reliability. Exploratory factor analysis is used to test the structural validity of the scales, and the factor loading of each item corresponding to all the variables is greater than the threshold of 0.7, thereby indicating that the scales have satisfactory structural validity.

Table 2. Reliability analysis.

The AVE of each variable is greater than 0.5, thereby indicating that the scales have satisfactory convergent validity. Combining Table 3, the square root of the AVE of each variable is greater than the correlation coefficient between the variable and the other variables. The variables exhibit satisfactory discriminant validity, which shows that the scales used in this paper demonstrate satisfactory validity.

Table 3. Validity analysis.