What Works Where? Scrutinizing How Personal Resources Spur Managers' Innovative Work Behaviour

ABSTRACT Whereas innovative work behaviour (IWB) is regarded as a desired positive behaviour for all organizational members, existing research has predominantly focused on employees, while only sparingly scrutinizing the IWB among managerial levels. To address this gap, we draw on upper echelons and positive organizational behaviour perspectives to examine how hope, self‐efficacy, resilience, optimism and organization‐based self‐esteem (OBSE) influence managers' IWB activities, namely, idea generation, promotion and realization. The relationships are tested using a sample of 201 managers from various managerial levels, sectors and company sizes. Regression‐based and necessary condition analyses estimate the effects and necessity of personal resources on IWB activities. Study findings suggest that managers' personal resources are important for IWB, but the impact differs by intrapreneurial activity. Hope, self‐efficacy and OBSE positively influence idea generation; self‐efficacy and resilience foster idea promotion; and self‐efficacy, OBSE, resilience and optimism foster idea realization. Supplementary analyses align with the upper echelons literature, revealing that managerial level matters; personal resources are unevenly distributed across managerial levels, partly explaining variations in managers' IWB. This study contributes to the growing research on managerial innovation. Our findings suggest that personal resources drive managerial IWB, with top managers scoring higher on both personal resources and IWB activities. Second, by disentangling IWB activities, our study demonstrates that idea generation, promotion and realization involve distinct challenges requiring different personal resources to be successfully mastered.