- Title
- Examining the relationship between high-involvement work systems, contextual organisational ambidexterity and employee innovative behaviour: a case of the Australian public healthcare services sector
- Creator
- Behmanesh, Iman
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Service organisations facing complexity and increased market expectations have to efficiently exploit their existing capabilities and remain flexible to explore new opportunities constantly. This may include performing activities, such as developing new tailored offerings, redesigning their existing services and undertaking modifications to their processes to exploit the opportunities that would create value to the organisation or other stakeholders as a means to perform and survive in today’s constantly changing environment successfully. A major problem posed by the need to pursue this complex task of both exploring and exploiting is that many organisations seem inclined to focus more on exploitative initiatives due to their higher chance of short-term success. However, studies of organisations that have survived and performed successfully over decades indicate that these organisations simultaneously exploit and explore. This ability to simultaneously exploit existing capabilities (incremental innovation) and explore new capabilities (discontinuous innovation) is referred to as organisational ambidexterity. However, there appears to be little empirical research examining the antecedents and consequences of contextual organisational ambidexterity and how it influences employee creative self-efficacy, attitude towards innovation, and innovative behaviours in different contexts. To this end, drawing upon a critical review of the literature, a conceptual model was developed that featured nine constructs requiring scholarly attention in the context of the Australian public healthcare services sector: high-involvement work systems, COA exploitation, COA exploration, employee attitudes towards innovation and employee creative self-efficacy, along with the employee innovative behaviours of initiation, promotion and implementation. Transformational leadership was also hypothesised to moderate the relationship between employee attitudes towards innovation and employee creative self efficacy, the relationships between employee attitudes towards innovation and innovative behaviours, and also the relationships between employee creative self-efficacy and innovative behaviours in the conceptual model. A mixed-methods research design was used in this research, with a qualitative stage followed by a quantitative stage. This study collected data in the form of 15 semi-structured interviews for the qualitative stage and a cross-sectional, online survey for the quantitative stage, with 133 usable responses received. Data analysis involved thematic analysis for the qualitative data and partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to analyse the survey data and test the posited relationships in the conceptual model. The analysis of the interviews conducted for Phase 1 of this research on what public healthcare workers expect from their organisational leadership that can enhance their innovative behaviour revealed two key findings. First, the HR practices and organisational management systems that are designed and implemented to actively engage employees in the specialised and general decision-making processes across their department and the whole organisation. Second, a leader who actively welcomes the employees’ creative ideas that could potentially translate into improved procedures, processes and services across the department and/or organisation. Based on the results of Phase 2 of this research, it turned out that a bundle of HR high involvement work systems comprising HR and management practices had a strong positive influence on both exploitation and exploration aspects of contextual organisational ambidexterity. Exploration-focused initiatives were found to drive employee attitudes towards innovation. However, exploitation-focused initiatives do not drive employee attitudes towards innovation. This finding should be interpreted in light of the Australian public healthcare services sector's hierarchical and highly structured working environment. Based on the survey results, employees’ attitude towards innovation and their creative self-efficacy strongly predicted employee innovative behaviour. The results also indicated that transformational leadership strongly influences the implementation stage of employee innovative behaviour. This finding is in line with prior research on the role of transformational leaders in bringing innovative ideas to life in the organisation. However, this research did not confirm the direct influence of transformational leadership on the initiation and promotion stages of employee innovative behaviour. The other important role that a transformational leader can play is a moderating role in strengthening the impact of employee attitudes towards innovation on their creative self-efficacy. Lastly, employee creative self-efficacy was found to partially mediate the relationship between employee attitudes towards innovation and employee innovative behaviour. The present research contributes to the body of knowledge in organisational ambidexterity and adds to the current understanding of how it translates into innovative behaviour of employees in a public service working environment. Innovation is considered one of the most critical success factors in challenging knowledge-intensive service environments. Employees at all levels of the organisation can positively contribute to sustainable organisational success by challenging the outdated and unproductive organisational processes and procedures.
- Subject
- high-involvement work systems; contextual organisational ambidexterity; employee attitude towards innovation; employee creative self-efficacy; employee innovative behaviour;; transformational leadership; Australian public healthcare services sector
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1505227
- Identifier
- uon:55648
- Rights
- Copyright 2022 Iman Behmanesh
- Language
- eng
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