1. Introduction
In the macro environment of an economic downturn, external pressure forces organizations to improve their performance requirements internally [
1]. In the increasingly fierce competition, organizations rely on employees to make broader and deeper innovation to seize the opportunities of the times. Employee innovation behavior has become a source of organizational innovation [
2]. In order to achieve the dual development of performance and innovation, many organizations have begun to set high-performance goals for employees to promote their development. After feeling the external forces exerted by these organizations, employees will realize the need to improve their performance in order to avoid adverse consequences in the workplace; this subjective perception caused by external forces is called performance pressure [
3,
4]. Is performance pressure, which combines high risks and high requirements, promoting or inhibiting employee innovation? Different scholars have different views, and it is of practical significance to scientifically use performance pressure management to ensure organizational vitality and promote employee adaptive growth, promote the sustainable development of organizations and enterprises, and clarify the impact of performance pressure on employee innovation [
5]. Previous studies have shown that performance pressure is an effective means of influencing employee innovation; this results-oriented work environment enables employees to better utilize and create knowledge [
6]. Therefore, when organizations apply appropriate performance pressure, the creativity, innovation behavior, and innovative performance of employees will all be improved [
7,
8]. However, some studies have also pointed out that under high performance pressure, employees’ attention will shrink, and individuals will shift from a broad team perspective to a narrow self-attention perspective [
9]. The weakening of cognitive function will lead to poorer performance in employees [
10]. Employees with high levels of stress are more likely to feel fatigued and perform worse [
11], which is not conducive to the emergence of innovation behavior.
From this, it can be seen that there are conflicting views on how performance pressure affects innovation, and some scholars have proposed that classifying innovation behavior for analysis may be the key to explaining this phenomenon [
12]. Ambidextrous innovation behavior is essentially a collection of two types of innovation behaviors [
13], which is a classification method of innovation behavior at the individual level, and has many similarities with ambidextrous innovation at the enterprise level, as it includes exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation [
14]. Individuals need to continuously expand their current knowledge range when engaging in exploratory innovation, while in exploitative innovation, they basically only need to utilize their existing knowledge base; the novelty levels of the two types of innovation are different [
15]. Inspired by this, we began to ponder how performance pressure can affect employee ambidextrous innovation behavior. On the one hand, we hope to explore the differences in the impact of performance pressure on different types of innovation. On the other hand, a recent study calls for exploring the triggering factors of high ambidextrous innovation among employees [
14]. Existing research has not revealed the mechanism of the relationship between performance pressure and employee ambidextrous innovation. To address these issues, this study will discuss the impact mechanism and boundary conditions of individual-level performance pressure on employee ambidextrous innovation based on Affective Events Theory.
The Affective Events Theory suggests that affective events in the workplace can have an impact on employees’ attitudes and behaviors by triggering affective reactions [
16]. Based on this, this article proposes that performance pressure, as an affective event in the workplace, can influence employees’ innovative behavior by forming an affective reaction. Existing research has shown that job involvement is one of the output outcomes of pressure [
17] and an important mediating variable in the mechanism of innovation behavior [
18]. Job involvement represents an individual’s psychological feeling of identifying with work, being willing to actively participate in work, and being very focused [
19,
20]. High levels of job involvement can positively predict employees’ creativity, so job involvement may be an affective reaction mediating the relationship between performance pressure and employee ambidextrous innovation.
In addition, a management approach that balances relaxation and leniency is more conducive to ensuring the long-term effectiveness of incentive mechanisms and promoting the establishment of sustainable organizations [
21]. Ensuring the well-being of employees is one of the important measures in response to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals [
22]. Therefore, in addition to promoting employee innovation through appropriate pressure, it is also necessary for organizations to inject motivation into employees and provide them with support and encouragement. Recent research on Affective Events Theory has also found that the external situational factors of organizations can affect the relationship between employee affective reactions and work attitudes or behaviors [
23]; workplace fun is a workplace characteristic that can make employees feel happy [
24]. Existing research has shown that workplace fun, as an external motivating factor, can help employees engage in more innovative behaviors in a state of job involvement by enhancing their level of focus at work, promoting informal learning behaviors in the workplace, and creating a relaxed work atmosphere that is error-tolerant [
25]. In an environment with a high level of workplace fun, employees will develop higher levels of innovation performance [
26], creativity [
27], and innovative behavior [
28]. The moderating effect of workplace fun on employee innovation has not been studied yet; therefore, this study attempts to propose that workplace fun may be an external situational factor that can moderate the relationship between job involvement and employee ambidextrous innovation.
In summary, this study constructs an impact model on performance pressure and employee ambidextrous innovation behavior based on Affective Events Theory in the context of intensified external competition and the pursuit of sustainable development by enterprises [
2]. Based on the Affective Events Theory of “work events—affective reactions—attitudes & behaviors” as the main influencing pathway [
16], this study introduces the individual psychological factor of job involvement as a mediating variable and the organizational situational factor of workplace fun as a moderating variable in the mechanism model of employee performance pressure on ambidextrous innovation. The aim is to explain why some employees can perform well in innovation behavior under performance pressure, deepen the analysis of the relationship between performance pressure and employee ambidextrous innovation, and discuss specific measures to promote sustainable development of the organizations.
Finally, the organization of this study is as follows:
Section 2 presents the theoretical framework and research hypotheses;
Section 3 introduces the methodology of this study;
Section 4 presents the results of empirical analysis; and
Section 5 discusses the research results, theoretical significance, and practical implications and points out the limitations and future prospects of the study.
5. Discussion
This article is based on the Affective Events Theory and tests the relationship between performance pressure, job involvement, workplace fun, and employee ambidextrous innovation. The results of the empirical analysis confirmed some of the hypotheses in this study and found that performance pressure does promote ambidextrous innovation among employees. Job involvement can play a mediating role between performance pressure and exploratory innovation, but this mediating role is not significant in exploitative innovation. In addition, workplace fun can also moderate the relationship between job involvement and exploitative innovation. These research findings have important theoretical value for the research fields of employee pressure management, fun activity management, and innovation management. This study explores the impact mechanism of performance pressure and employee ambidextrous innovation and draws the following conclusions:
(1) Performance pressure can positively predict employee ambidextrous innovation, indicating that the higher the performance pressure, the more employees will engage in ambidextrous innovation behavior. The discovery that performance pressure is beneficial for employee innovation is consistent with previous literature research [
7]; previous research has demonstrated that under the guidance of high-performance goals, in order to gain recognition from the organization, employees will actively improve their performance [
80]. As one of the main viewpoints of Affective Events Theory is that affective events can have an impact on individual behaviors [
16], performance pressure, as an affective event in the workplace, directly affects work behaviors. Whether employees perceive anxiety when they see a gap between themselves and performance goals, or receive incentives from future benefits after achieving expected performance goals, performance pressure will have a driving effect [
4,
33]. This kind of emotion that drives employees to catch up with performance goals will lead them to make improvements in existing work and seek external breakthroughs. In the field of employee ambidextrous innovation research, scholars call for thinking and exploring the motivating factors of high employee ambidextrous innovation behavior [
14]; the findings of this study respond to this call, showing that performance pressure is a stimulating factor for exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation. Flexibly regulating employee performance pressure may simultaneously stimulate employee performance in high ambidextrous innovation. Organizations can guide employees to engage in high ambidextrous innovation behavior through appropriate performance pressure management. Although most scholars previously believed that performance pressure has a significant negative impact that cannot be ignored [
35,
40], the results of this study confirm the driving force behind pressure.
(2) Job involvement plays a mediating role between performance pressure and exploratory innovation, indicating that performance pressure can encourage employees to form an attitude of paying attention to and valuing work. This is consistent with previous research findings [
46,
81], where the formation of a mindset of involvement can subsequently enhance individual innovation [
59,
60]. As previously found in research, employees in the psychological state of being involved in work tend to increasingly believe that achieving work goals is important, think deeply, and become more focused [
62]. This also confirms the main mechanism in the Affective Events Theory that affects employee behavior after events trigger emotions [
16]. However, the results of this study indicate that job involvement reflects an incomplete mediating effect, indicating that the mechanism by which performance pressure affects ambidextrous innovation still needs to be explored.
In addition, the mediating role of job involvement in the relationship between performance pressure and exploratory and exploitative innovation is not the same. Performance pressure can affect exploratory innovation through job involvement but cannot promote employee exploitative innovation through job involvement. By reviewing the content of Affective Events Theory, this study identified two possible reasons to explain the differences in this impact. One is that performance pressure directly affects exploitative innovation through nonemotional pathways and exploratory innovation through emotional pathways [
32]. Perhaps the obstacles to initiating exploitative innovation are relatively small, and employees only need to compare their performance requirements with their own skill level to take action. However, exploratory innovation requires significant breakthroughs, and this is difficult to achieve solely by utilizing existing knowledge and skills. Therefore, it is necessary to first form a focused affective reaction of job involvement to promote exploratory innovation [
15].
The second explanation is that exploitative innovation has other affective triggering factors, as Weiss and Cropanzano pointed out when proposing the Affective Events Theory that there are differences in the influence of mood and emotion [
16]. Based on the research in this article, it can be found that exploratory innovation requires breakthrough innovation from scratch, and employees need multiple factors such as determination, courage, perseverance, and endurance. Only when employees accumulate a certain level of mood can they engage in exploratory innovation behavior. However, exploitative innovation is mostly based on improvements to existing work and can start based on existing knowledge and skills. Therefore, when employees perceive a gap between themselves and their performance goals, they will immediately engage in exploitative innovation behavior, which can be achieved without forming job involvement. Or there may be other mediating factors, such as brief and immediate emotional responses that can affect employee exploitative innovation. Further exploration and discussion can be conducted on the intermediary mechanism of exploitative innovation in future research.
(3) Existing studies mainly analyze the aftereffects of workplace fun but lack attention to its moderation effects [
26,
27,
28]. This study found that workplace fun significantly moderates the relationship between job involvement and employee exploitative innovation. As recently discovered by research on Affective Events Theory, organizational factors can affect individual affective reactions and thus affect individual behaviors [
23]. Workplace fun is stimulated by creating an environment of harmonious relationships, exchange of perspectives, informal learning, and tolerance for errors, which coincides with the views of scholars such as Yang [
79]. This study found that workplace fun can moderate the relationship between job involvement and exploitative innovation, indicating that creating a relaxed and inclusive atmosphere for organizations is beneficial for employees to learn and unleash creative ideas. Providing interesting support activities such as fun training and psychological counseling for employees can help them directly improve their learning. However, we also found that workplace fun does not have a significant moderating effect on job involvement and exploratory innovation. This may be because fun activities correspond to communication and learning within the organization, and exploratory innovation relies more on employees continuously learning new knowledge and skills outside the organization on an existing basis [
15]. Therefore, the moderating effect of workplace fun on exploratory innovation is not significant. This is why selecting the appropriate type of workplace fun activities is essential to guide employees toward innovation.
5.1. Theoretical Significance
Firstly, this study explores the positive impact of performance pressure on employee ambidextrous innovation. Most existing research has only revealed the negative effects of performance pressure as a specific type of work pressure [
10,
11] or explored the double-edged sword effect of performance pressure from both positive and negative perspectives [
82]. The positive effects that performance pressure can bring to organizations have not received sufficient attention, and there are not many studies on how to promote ambidextrous innovation at the individual level of employees through effective performance pressure management. Unlike previous studies, this study delves into whether performance pressure can help stimulate ambidextrous innovation behavior at the employee level and compares and analyzes the differences in the impact of performance pressure on exploratory and exploitative innovation among employees, which helps to refine the relevant theoretical content in the field of performance pressure.
Secondly, this study expands the mechanism by which performance pressure affects employee ambidextrous innovation. Due to the fact that the research on ambidextrous innovation has not shifted from the enterprise level to the individual level for a long time, there is not much discussion on employee ambidextrous innovation, and existing research has not clarified how performance pressure affects individual ambidextrous innovation behavior. This study verifies the mediating role of job involvement between performance pressure and employee exploratory innovation, revealing the specific impact path of performance pressure on employee exploratory innovation. Currently, there is relatively abundant research on performance pressure and job involvement, while there is relatively little research on workplace fun and employee ambidextrous innovation. Therefore, based on the previous research, this study combines the above variables and uses job involvement as a mediator and workplace fun as a moderator to explore the impact mechanism of performance pressure on employee ambidextrous innovation. This study can strengthen the understanding of the intrinsic relationship between performance pressure, job involvement, workplace fun, and employee ambidextrous innovation and further expand the research on the antecedents of employee ambidextrous innovation.
Thirdly, it enriches the theoretical achievements of the emerging management practice of workplace fun. This study is based on the Affective Events Theory and regards workplace fun as a characteristic of the work environment in which organizations support employees. It verifies that workplace fun can play a moderating role in the positive correlation between job involvement and employee exploitative innovation. In addition, most existing studies consider workplace fun as an independent variable to examine its positive aftereffects [
70,
71], while few analyze workplace fun as a moderating variable. Therefore, this study helps to deepen the study of the mechanism of workplace fun and also enriches the application of Affective Events Theory in the study of workplace fun.
5.2. Practical Implications
Firstly, this study can provide direction for managers in promoting the sustainable development of organizations, helping them to more reasonably and effectively set performance goals and manage employee pressure. Performance management combines evaluation and development characteristics and is an important management tool [
46]. Exploring the positive effects of performance pressure is beneficial for enterprise managers to motivate and encourage employees. This study found that there are differences in the impact of performance pressure on different types of innovative behavior among employees. This can help employees recognize the positive effects of performance pressure, guide them to correctly view and make good use of the performance pressure they bear in daily work, maintain long-term work motivation, and also help enterprises focus more on setting performance goals in management practice. In organizational management practice, proactive employee innovation plays a crucial role in the overall innovation performance of the enterprise and the shaping of its core competitiveness [
2]. This study aims to deepen the organization’s understanding of the incentive path for employee proactive innovation; explore ways for enterprises to satisfy employee intrinsic motivation; and provide theoretical, technical, and methodological support for management consulting, which will contribute to the optimization of enterprise management practices. Therefore, studying the impact of performance pressure on employee ambidextrous innovation has practical significance.
Secondly, this study helps organizations build a flexible and effective employee innovation incentive mechanism. Creating a healthy and efficient work environment is conducive to promoting the common growth of organizations and individuals [
83], so this study not only discusses the promoting effect of pressure but also focuses on the key role of fun activities as motivation. Providing employees with an organizational environment that is both stressful and motivating may be one of the ways to make organizations sustainable. These research results can serve as a reference for enterprises in designing fun activities in the workplace and help them create a more relaxed and enjoyable cultural environment. Through this study, enterprises can choose targeted fun activities based on the actual situation of organizational development and the internal needs of employees when designing activities, pay attention to employee fun preferences, and eliminate workplace fun activities that cannot benefit employees, helping employees achieve performance goals better and faster and improving innovative behavior in a targeted manner. The conclusion of this study can serve as a reference for human resource management practices in enterprises, providing measures and optimization suggestions for effectively motivating employees to actively innovate, helping enterprises create a positive and proactive innovation atmosphere, providing new ideas for the relationship between enterprises and employees, making employees work happily, and making organizations more resilient.
5.3. Research Limitations and Future Prospects
Firstly, the data-collection method of this study mainly adopts employee self-evaluation, and the collected cross-sectional data are from the same time period. Although the problem of sample homology error is not serious from the perspective of data representation, it cannot be completely eliminated. In addition, this study did not differentiate the industries or the occupations of the samples during the questionnaire survey. Therefore, it is recommended that future research be conducted using multiple time periods, multiple sources, or data-pairing methods. Future research can focus on the specificity of performance pressure in stimulating innovation in a certain industry or profession and also pay attention to the differences in the impact of different industries and occupations, expand the types and scope of samples, and further verify the relationship between performance pressure and employee ambidextrous innovation in different cultural contexts.
Secondly, this study mainly focuses on the individual perception of performance pressure among employees and its impact on ambidextrous innovation. Future research can categorize and compare the impact mechanism of performance pressure on individual innovation based on different levels of performance pressure, such as team level, company level, market level, etc. It is also possible to compare and study the differences in the impact of performance pressure on management and employee groups at the individual level in order to achieve differentiated incentives between groups.
Thirdly, this study only focuses on the positive impact of performance pressure on employee job involvement and ambidextrous innovation. Further discussion can be conducted on the negative pathways of performance pressure on ambidextrous innovation. The double-edged sword effect brought about by performance pressure and the U-shaped impact of performance pressure on employee psychology and behavior need to be explored. In addition, the impact on employee innovation when performance goals are unrealistic is also worth further discussion. In this study, the impact of workplace fun as a moderating variable on employee ambidextrous innovation was discussed. Subsequent studies can also use workplace fun as an antecedent variable to analyze its direct effect on ambidextrous innovation behavior.