Employee’s innovative personality and self-efficacy

Abstract

Innovation, a concept that has been researched in the organizational behaviour literature for almost 30 years, is extremely important for the sustainable success of organizations. In today’s dynamic world along with economic, social and political changes, customer needs and expectations are also changing. The formulas that lead a company to success yesterday mean nothing today. Therefore, for companies to continue their existence in an increasingly changing and complex environment, they need to be able to adapt to the speed of this change and even give direction when necessary. Changes occurring in the world require the restructuring of organizations, the way they do business and the quality of the workforce they need to adapt to this change. Undoubtedly, it is the human resource of the organization that will initiate and maintain this change. At this point, human resources is a strategic power for organization that is as important as the economic and technological power. Having employees with high innovative thinking and behaving skills creates a competitive advantage for companies. There may be many organizational, individual and environmental predictors of innovative behaviours. On the other hand, employees who have enough belief and courage that they can succeed in a job are known to initiate innovations. In other words, the employee's perception of self-efficacy is necessary for innovative behaviours. In this study, the concept of self-efficacy, which is assumed to be a predictor of innovative behaviours, will be discussed. The concept of self-efficacy, which expresses the effort to set new goals for oneself and to reach these goals with courage, determination and relentlessly, is an extremely important determinant for innovative behaviours. Self-efficacy perception has a very important place in an individual's job selection, career success and professional progress. Therefore, it is extremely important to know the factors that affect the perception of self-efficacy. In this study, the following question was asked by considering the perception of self-efficacy in the context of personality traits: Is the concept of self-efficacy affected by the personality trait of openness to innovation? This study was carried out in order to answer this question. In this context, the sample of the research consists of 503 people working in various institutions in the public and private sectors. Qualitative research method was used for this study. Perception of general self-efficacy and openness to innovation have been measured with scales whose validity and reliability have been tested in many studies before. The obtained data were analysed by referring to the relevant quantitative analyses (descriptive statistics, reliability, factor and correlation). As a result of the analyses, significant findings were obtained. The findings were evaluated in the context of the relevant literature in the discussion section. Possible research suggestions for future studies are proposed in this section.