‘Catching the new’: Exploring the impact of professional networks on innovative work behavior in healthcare

In this paper we aim to investigate the impact of professional networks on Innovative Work Behavior in the healthcare setting. We investigate a community of 181 primary care physicians in Italy. Social network analysis techniques and ordinal regression model were used to understand to what extent the degree of collaboration and advice among physicians impacts on their propensity to adopt innovative treatments in clinical practice. Our findings document that the more central physicians are in their professional network occurring with peers, the more likely they are to display an innovative behavior. Results also show that the more connected the physicians are with colleagues employed in hospital settings, the more likely they are to display an innovative behavior. Finally, we found that the degree of centrality in the professional network with peers moderates the relationship between centrality in the network with hospital colleagues and their propensity towards innovative behavior. This study provides managers with new insights into the relational determinants affecting innovative behavior in the workplace and suggests the use of analytical tools to formalize and integrate the professional relationships of different individuals.