CHAMPIONING YOUR INNOVATION WITH A CAPTIVATING VISION. A GOOD IDEA?

Middle-managers execute their work between operational activities and strategic decision-making. Therefore, they have a unique position to identify and promote innovations. Literature hints towards vision communication to successfully pitch and convince people of an innovation. However, vision communication theory is only studied from the stance of leaders. With my study I test a lens reversal exploring the effect of upward vision communication on innovation decision-making by top management. To do so I introduce the mediating effect of leadership threat and the moderating effect of managerial openness. To test the hypotheses, I distributed a survey to top managers at a large Dutch insurance company. Half of the respondents received a survey with an innovative pitch by a middle manager enriched with vision communication, the other half only received a promotional pitch. Survey results do not enable me to report significant interaction between variables. However, I found a direct significant negative effect of managerial openness on leadership threat and marginal negative interaction between top managers having less experience in position (< 5 years) and lower experience of leadership threat.