Purpose: Based on the social cognitive theory and cognitive-affective system theory, the purpose of this study is to explore how and when paradoxical leadership enhances employees’ bootlegging innovation. To achieve this purpose, the authors proposed a double-chain mediation model in this study. Methods: Data with 342 questionnaires were collected for effective matching between employees and leaders at two time nodes. The hypotheses were validated by structural equation modeling and bootstrap approaches. Results: Results indicate that paradoxical leadership has a significant and positive impact on employees’ bootleg innovation. In addition, psychological capital and thriving at work play a partial mediating role between paradoxical leadership and employees’ bootlegging behaviors respectively and a chain mediating role between the two together. Moreover, there is no significant difference among the three mediating paths. Conclusion: The present research advances our understanding of bootleg innovation with a focus on the specific role of paradoxical leadership. Our findings, and especially those related to the role of psychological capital and thriving at work, reveal the influence mechanisms of paradoxical leadership on employees’ bootleg innovation. At the same time, it is useful for understanding what leadership style can effectively stimulate employees’ bootleg innovation.

Purpose: Bootleg Innovation helps enterprises create unconventional innovation achievements, and has gradually become an important approach for radical innovation under the background of open innovation. Through the integration of the cognitive-affective processing system and conservation of resources (COR) theory, the present study takes integrative complexity as a moderator, and explores the mechanism of LMX ambivalence on employees’ bootleg innovation. Participants and Methods: A total of 387 employees and 110 supervising managers participated in the two-wave dyadic survey. To test our hypotheses, we performed the hierarchical regression and conducted bootstrapping analyses to test our hypotheses. Results: Findings indicated that LMX ambivalence not only improves employees’ cognitive flexibility and promotes bootleg innovation, but also aggravates employees’ job anxiety and hinders bootleg innovation. In addition, integrative complexity significantly moderates the above two mediating paths. Specifically, when integrative complexity was higher, the negative mediating effect of job anxiety was attenuated, and the positive mediating effect of cognitive flexibility was enhanced. Conclusion: Contrasting with previous research, this research analyzed the triggering mechanism of bootleg innovation combined with the dynamic interaction of environmental stimulus, emotion and cognition. The findings provide novel insight into how to achieve bootleg innovation.

Green finance innovation has received emerging attention from the finance industry in recent years; however, few studies have explored the internal mechanisms that link innovation climate to a green finance R&D team’s effectiveness. Using data from 65 teams that belong to green finance industries, collected via the questionnaire survey, we explore how innovation climate positively affects knowledge sharing, and both innovation climate and knowledge sharing can improve the effectiveness of the green finance R&D team. We also find that knowledge sharing mediates the relationship between innovation climate and a green finance R&D team’s effectiveness and that knowledge heterogeneity moderates the relationship between knowledge sharing and team effectiveness. Based on these findings, this study contributes to providing useful recommendations for professional managers and policymakers to effectively promote the development of the green finance industry.

To investigate Chinese enterprises’ innovation quality and examine how it is determined by the enterprise ownership, this paper uses about 73.8 thousand invention patents applied by Chinese enterprises during 1985–2011 in estimating patent return based on the renewal period. We take patent return to be the measurement of innovation quality, and make a comparison between public and private enterprises. We find that the innovation quality of public enterprises is improved after restructuring, but is still lower than that of private enterprises. We may find the causes of the innovation quality differences from the allocation efficiency of R&D resources. Monopolized enterprises own higher innovation quality by monopolizing industry resources, which leads to a low R&D resources allocation efficiency. In comparison, the R&D resources allocation efficiency of public enterprises in the competitive industry is higher than that in monopolized enterprises. R&D resources allocation efficiency is generally inversely proportional to the public owned level, and proportional to the market competition level. This study generates an important policy implication, that is, the social R&D resources allocation efficiency of China would be improved by disposing part of R&D resources monopolized by public research institutes and public enterprises to private enterprises.

Background: Bootleg innovation differs from traditional innovation in that it involves actions that either contravene established organizational rules and procedures or are conducted autonomously and covertly by individuals, with the aim of benefiting the organization. While prior research has highlighted a strong link between moral factors and bootleg innovation, there remains a paucity of studies exploring the moral foundations underlying such innovation. Drawing on moral licensing theory, this study examines the dual nature of bootleg innovation to elucidate the mechanism through which perceived organizational status influences employee engagement in bootleg innovation. Methods: This study constructs and verifies a moderated mediating model of organizational status perception and bootleg innovation, using exploratory factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis based on 394 survey responses. Results: The findings indicate that: (1) Perceived organizational status has a significant positive effect on employee bootleg innovation behavior. (2) Both dimensions of moral licensing (moral credits and moral credentials) mediate the relationship between perceived organizational status and bootleg innovation behavior. (3) Intrinsic motivation positively moderates the impact of perceived organizational status on moral credits and moral credentials. Conclusion: This study offers a unique perspective on the moral dilemmas employees face in bootleg innovation, thereby providing a novel lens for understanding their bootleg innovation behavior.