The “Double-Edged Sword” Effects of LMX Ambivalence———An Integrated Model of Two Approaches Based on Cognitive Flexibility and Job Anxiety

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.