Prosocially motivated innovative team behaviour and the sincerity of an organisational mission

Abstract

Little is known about how mission-driven organisations can facilitate innovative behaviour in prosocially motivated teams. We seek to understand how the sincerity of a firm’s prosocial mission, as it is perceived by employees, moderates the impact of prosocial motivation on innovative behaviour in teams. To test our model, we conduct hierarchical ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses in a multinational mission-driven organisation. With a sample of 122 employee teams and supervisors in a multinational health corporation, we find that neither prosocial motivation nor perceived sincerity alone is sufficient to promote innovative behaviour at the team level. Interestingly, however, the key finding of our study is that when teams simultaneously display high levels of prosocial motivation and perceive the prosocial mission as sincere, the level of innovative behaviour is higher. Our results have practical implications for recruitment and selection processes as well as internal activities within organisations to promote innovative behaviour.