Extending Social Exchange Theory to Investigate Employee Innovative Work Behaviors in Vietnamese Manufacturing Firms

In recent years, manufacturing enterprises in Vietnam have faced increasing pressure to transition from low-cost production methods to innovation-driven, value-added systems for sustainable development. Nonetheless, the degree of employee creativity remains constrained, indicating that there is a quest to examine factors that might trigger innovative behavior of employees at the workplace to enhance the company’s competitiveness. In such a context, this study investigates the conjunctive influence of perceived organizational support, transformational leadership, and self-efficacy on innovative work behavior of employees. We adopted the social exchange theory to propose our research model with self-efficacy as a mediator. An online survey of employees working in manufacturing firms in Vietnam was conducted. After six months, we received 690 valid responses. Structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis in SmartPLS 4.0 was employed to test the hypotheses. Our findings show that perceived organizational support has a strong positive impact on the self-efficacy and innovative work behavior of Vietnamese employees in manufacturing firms. Our study also confirmed that transformational leadership plays a key role in promoting employees’ innovative work behavior. However, self-efficacy does not moderate the relationship between perceived organizational support and innovative work behavior. Our findings imply that manufacturing firms should prioritize leadership and the working climate to foster innovative work behavior of employees.