Political Skill and Role Overload as Antecedents of Innovative Work Behavior in the Public Sector

• Published date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0091026019863450
• Date: 01 September 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0091026019863450

Public Personnel Management

2020, Vol. 49(3) 444 –469

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0091026019863450

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Article

Political Skill and Role

Overload as Antecedents of

Innovative Work Behavior

in the Public Sector

Nicholas Clarke1 and Malcolm Higgs2

Abstract

We draw upon the theory of Conservation of Resources (COR) in positing political skill

and role overload as influencing perceptions of either resource loss or conservation

not previously studied in innovative work behavior. Based on a survey of 249 junior

doctors in the United Kingdom, we found that role overload not only had direct

positive effects on innovative work behavior but also negatively affects innovative

work behavior, mediated through its effects on perceived organizational support.

Political skill was positively associated with innovative work behavior, mediated

through role-breadth self-efficacy. Our findings support a growing body of literature

suggesting that engaging in innovative work behavior is a problem-focused coping

strategy to deal with job demands and stressors. Current theorizing that job demands

can have positive effects on innovative work behavior needs to be reconsidered given

alternative negative effects suggested by COR.

Keywords

innovation, organizational behavior, HRM

Introduction

There is widespread agreement that organizations should actively support employee

innovative work behavior (IWB) to respond to today’s dynamic business environments

1EADA Business School, Barcelona, Spain

2University of Hull, Hull, UK

Corresponding Author:

Nicholas Clarke, EADA Business School, Arago, 204, 08011 Barcelona, Spain.

Email: nclarke@eada.edu

863450PPMXXX10.1177/0091026019863450Public Personnel ManagementClarke and Higgs

research-article2019

Clarke and Higgs 445

(Getz & Robinson, 2003; Unsworth & Parker, 2003; Van de Ven, Polley, Garud, &

Venkataraman, 2008). This is no less important for public sector organizations that are

also under enormous pressures to innovate. Indeed, the increasing number of policy

documents both national and international attest to the gravitas attached to the pursuit

of this goal (Audit Commission, 2007; Australian National Audit Office [ANAO],

2009; Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2012).

Alongside this burgeoning policy documentation has been an increasing body of empir-

ical research on public sector innovation (Bason, 2010; Borins, 2001; De Vries, Bekkers,

& Tummers, 2016). This recognizes that differing contexts associated with private and

public sector organizations exert influence on capacities for innovation. Much of this

literature suggests there are greater impediments to IWB in the public sector, given the

nature of how public sector organizations work and are structured, as well as very dif-

ferent governance issues affecting them (Damanpour & Schneider, 2009; Fernandez &

Moldogaziev, 2012). These include, for example, the lack of reward or incentives for

employees to innovate, the costs of failure (particularly in terms of exposure to the

media) should things go wrong, the lack of competitive pressure to innovate and strict

agency regulation (Borins, 2001; Bysted & Jespersen, 2014). Bos-Nehles, Bondarouk,

and Nijenhuis (2017), in a case study of IWB in the Netherlands fire services, high-

lighted how strong formalization to secure quality in public services combined with

strict agency control impeded IWBs.

De Vries et al. (2016) conducted a systematic review of the public sector innovation

literature covering studies published between 1990 and 2014. Of these, 54 studies

(approximately 30%) focused on innovation at the individual level. These highlighted

individual characteristics such as employee autonomy, commitment, and creativity, as

key factors involved in the generation and adoption of innovation. They concluded,

however, that most studies lacked a clear theoretical underpinning and that more work

was needed to understand what was the “publicness” of public sector innovation that

distinguished it from the private sector; that is, what factors distinguish and promote

IWB in the public sector that might be different in some way to that in the private sec-

tor. We take up this challenge by providing new insights into factors associated with

IWB in a public sector setting. We make two significant contributions to the literature

in this area. First, we adopt the concept of publicness as defined by Bozeman and

Bretschneider (1994), to guide the selection of antecedents we believe to be of particu-

lar significance to IWB in public sector organizations. Next, we draw upon Conservation

of Resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 2001) to further develop our understanding of

the antecedents to IWB. Specifically, we posit and examine relationships between

political skill and IWB based on the notion that this individual characteristic should

support resource conservation and gain as suggested by COR theory. We also examine

the effects of role overload, a form of job demands not previously explored in relation

to its effects on IWB and which is widely reported as a particular concern in public

sector organizations. We address the following research question:

1. Research Question 1: How do political skill and role overload contribute to

IWB among public sector employees?