Fostering innovative behavior in the aviation industry: The role of perceived supervisor support and work group diversity

  • Received October 28, 2020;
    Accepted February 18, 2021;
    Published February 24, 2021
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.19(1).2021.14
  • Article Info
    Volume 19 2021, Issue #1, pp. 163-176
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

The research primarily seeks to understand how supervisor support can directly and indirectly enhance the service innovative behavior (SIB) of flight attendants via work engagement. Moreover, although there has been some research on the effect of group diversity on organizational performance, the results have not been consistent. Thus, this study addresses this gap by investigating how work group diversity can make variance in the relationship between work engagement and innovative behavior of flight attendants. The sample size of 242 flight attendants working at the central airport in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, has been taken for the study. To test hypotheses, structural equation modeling and bootstrapping were employed. This study provided an evidence for the positive nexus between perceived supervisor support and SIB. Additionally, the results shed light on a mediation mechanism of work engagement for the association between flight attendants’ perception of their supervisor and innovative behavior. Furthermore, tenure diversity and job position diversity in a work group were proved to play a moderating role in the relationship between work engagement and service innovative behavior. Specifically, flight attendants are more willing to exhibit innovative behaviors when working in a homogeneous group in terms of tenure and job position rather than in a heterogeneous group. The empirical results contributed to the diversity management literature and broadened the understanding of how to activate the service innovative behavior of employees. From a managerial perspective, managers should pay attention to the characteristics of employees when organizing teamwork.

Acknowledgment
The authors are grateful to the anonymous referees of the journal for their extremely useful suggestions for improving the quality of this paper.

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    • Figure 1. Moderating effect of tenure diversity
    • Figure 2. Moderating effect of job position diversity
    • Table 1. Sample characteristics
    • Table 2. Correlation matrix and variance extracted
    • Table 3. Structural equation modeling results
    • Conceptualization
      Long Nguyen Le Hoang, Huong Nguyen Thi Thu, Viet-Anh Ho
    • Formal Analysis
      Long Nguyen Le Hoang
    • Methodology
      Long Nguyen Le Hoang
    • Project administration
      Long Nguyen Le Hoang
    • Supervision
      Long Nguyen Le Hoang
    • Validation
      Long Nguyen Le Hoang
    • Writing – original draft
      Long Nguyen Le Hoang
    • Investigation
      Huong Nguyen Thi Thu
    • Resources
      Huong Nguyen Thi Thu
    • Writing – review & editing
      Huong Nguyen Thi Thu, Viet-Anh Ho
    • Visualization
      Viet-Anh Ho