The role of ownership in serial idea submissions

Employees’ ideas are a crucial source for organizational creativity and innovation. As firms cannot implement all ideas employees generate, they have to decide which ideas to select and which ideas to reject. Idea evaluation decisions, in turn, affect future idea generation and sustained innovativeness of firms, as idea rejections are known to dampen future submissions. However, the contingency factors under which idea decision impacts future submissions are unclear. Thus, we set out to investigate under what conditions the outcome of idea evaluation processes in organizations, that is selection versus rejection of decisions, are more or less likely to affect employees’ future idea submissions. Drawing on feedback theories and social exchange theory, we argue that the effect of an idea rejection versus an idea selection is larger for higher levels of idea ownership (individual and shared ownership). We test our prediction in a sample of more than 300,000 idea evaluation decisions from more than 30,000 idea creators in a large organization. We find that the effect of idea rejections as opposed to idea selection on future idea submissions is larger for higher levels of ownership (individual ownership and shared ownership) We contribute to research on outcomes of idea evaluation, and ownership.