<p>Employee innovation is a key driver of organizational renewal and long-term competitiveness, yet less is known about how CEO-level entrepreneurial orientations are associated with employees’ innovative behavior across organizational levels. Drawing on the attention-based view, this study examines whether CEO entrepreneurial orientation (CEO EO) is associated with employee innovative behavior through a senior-executive-rated innovation-oriented cultural orientation, and whether this cultural pathway depends on environmental dynamism and competitiveness (EDC). Using matched multilevel data from 149 Chinese firms, 554 departments, and 2540 employees, this study finds that CEO EO is positively associated with employee innovative behavior and that this association is mediated by senior-executive-rated innovation-oriented cultural orientation. Additionally, the findings demonstrate that EDC weakens the association between CEO EO and senior-executive-rated innovation-oriented cultural orientation, suggesting that turbulent and competitive environments may disrupt the consistency and institutionalization through which CEO EO is translated into innovation-oriented cultural signals. The conditional indirect-effect results further indicate that the indirect association between CEO EO and employee innovative behavior through senior-executive-rated innovation-oriented cultural orientation is stronger when EDC is lower rather than higher. These findings extend CEO EO research by linking CEO-level entrepreneurial orientation to employee-level innovation, clarify one organizational-level cultural pathway, and identify a boundary condition under which entrepreneurial leadership signals are less consistently translated into innovation-oriented cultural orientations.</p>