Fostering innovative behavior in health organizations: a PLS-SEM analysis of Norwegian hospital employees

Abstract

Background Health organization research is experiencing a strong refocus on employees’ individual innovative behavior (IIB), revealing that many of the influential factors at work remain uncertain. Hence, this study empirically examines fostering of hospital employees’ IIB by focusing on direct and indirect relationships of organizational culture (here labeled internal market-oriented culture, IMOC), psychological capital (PsyCap), and organizational commitment (OC). Methods The study focused on a sample of 1008 hospital employees, using a partial least squares–structural equation modeling method to analyze and test the relationships hypothesized in this study. A multigroup comparison was performed to test the heterogeneity of personal characteristics. The indirect relationships of PsyCap were tested using mediator analyses. Results Our results reveal that IMOC has a positive and significant correlation to employees’ PsyCap and IIB. PsyCap is directly related to IIB and indirectly related to IMOC and IIB. Furthermore, the study found that IIB is related to OC. Conclusions This study extends the current debate on how IIB is fostered at work by examining PsyCap and IMOC as antecedents of IIB. The study has added to the IIB research area by examining the role of IIB on OC. The study is among the first attempts in its category to contribute to health organizations and managers by empirically examining the role of IMOC on employees’ PsyCap and IIB—and, in turn, their OC.

The impact of organizational culture and leadership climate on organizational attractiveness and innovative behavior: a study of Norwegian hospital employees

“…services [1], with improvements in areas such as value, efficiency, and innovative thinking [1][2][3]. Increased patient needs and demand for care are pushing health organizations to keep pace with the increasingly challenging health industry and the complexity of offering quality healthcare [1,4].…”

“…services [1], with improvements in areas such as value, efficiency, and innovative thinking [1][2][3]. Increased patient needs and demand for care are pushing health organizations to keep pace with the increasingly challenging health industry and the complexity of offering quality healthcare [1,4]. Employee innovativeness is not only becoming essential for addressing patient needs and demands [5], but also indispensable for a continued expansion and adoption of novel ideas in response to current environmental and market changes [6,7].…”

“…With "healthcare's complex environment and its diverse communities of practice (CoPs)" [5], the role of hospital employees in all categories and their innovative behavior is a key strategic tool in responding to the above challenges [1]. The importance of hospital employees is their knowledge-based patient-oriented expertise [8].…”

“…The importance of hospital employees is their knowledge-based patient-oriented expertise [8]. As hospital employees stand at the front line of patient care, their diverse CoPs require an organizational culture and climate that is conducive to employee innovativeness [1,5,9] to improve organizational performance, service quality delivery, and patient care [9]. Consequently, given their employees critical role, health organizations should strive to promote a culture and climate that fosters employee innovation at work, here termed "individual innovative behavior (IIB)" [10].…”

Psychological Capital for Competitive Advantage: A Review

“…(Zhou and Shalley, 2003;Zhang and Bartol, 2010;Qiu et al2015). Employees depicting high innovative behaviour help organizations to out-perform in the constantly changing business environment (Mutonyi et al, 2021). Studies have found that creative and innovative employee behaviour is linked to better quality of services, higher customer satisfaction as well as better performance (Sanders et al, 2010).…”