Boosting innovation in uncertain condition to grow an economic income: The role of flexible working arrangements

Due to the current financial instability worldwide, maintaining business growth requires continuous breakthroughs and innovations. It means that millennials, the current majority of the workforce, need to be innovative instead of feeling insecure about their jobs in this uncertain economic condition. Job insecurity prevents millennials from performing innovative work behavior (IWB) because employees tend to avoid time-consuming activities to generate creative ideas when they are insecure about their jobs. Thus, this study examines the negative effect of job insecurity on innovative work behavior. Given the importance of innovative work behavior, it is worth to find possible ways to minimize the negative effect of job insecurity on IWB. Therefore, this study tried to explore whether flexible working arrangement (FWA) could buffer the negative impact of job insecurity on innovative work behavior. The results showed that the negative effect of job insecurity on IWB would be reduced when the FWA is high. In other words, the negative effect of job insecurity on IWB in low FWA condition (r = -.37; p < .01) became insignificant in high FWA condition (r = -.01, n.s.).