Innovation climate, knowledge management, and innovative work behavior in small software companies

Innovation is of great significance to a company’s sustainable development. Using structural equation modeling, we analyzed data from an online survey conducted with 385 employees of software companies in China. We explored the mechanism through which innovation climate helped improve knowledge management and innovative work behavior in the businesses. The results show that innovation climate had a positive impact on knowledge acquisition, knowledge dissemination, and responsiveness to knowledge, as three dimensions of management of knowledge; and also on idea generation and idea promotion, as two of three dimensions of innovative work behavior. However, the impact of innovation climate on the dimension of idea realization was nonsignificant. These findings enrich the literature on innovation in regard to work behavior and workplace climate, and highlight the important impact of innovation climate on knowledge management and innovative work behavior. The cultivation of employees’ innovative behavior helps to improve enterprise performance, so enterprise managers will also benefit.