49 research outputs found
Fostering proactive behaviour: The role of work‐related reflection, psychological empowerment, and participative safety for innovative behaviour and job crafting
No full textThis contribution aimed at investigating how work‐related reflection as cognitive efforts towards developing an understanding of work tasks, the surrounding work context, and one's professional competencies adds to the role of psychological empowerment and participative safety in predicting innovative behaviour and job crafting as two forms of proactivity. Quantitative data from 295 employees of micro, small, and medium‐sized organizations in the information sector were collected with a cross‐sectional questionnaire. For hypotheses testing, structural equation modelling was employed. The results of the study showed that work‐related reflection and psychological empowerment were substantially related to innovative behaviour and job crafting while participative safety only played a minor role. These findings imply that jobs need to contain empowering and sufficiently complex work tasks that require reflection and provide occasions for reflective interactions to enable employees to create efficient routines and adapt to changes at work. Furthermore, experiences of empowerment need to be rooted in social interactions at work. Likewise, the value of reflection will only unfold if employees and supervisors regularly engage in reflection
Deliberate Practice as a Lever for Professional Judgment:Lessons from Informal Workplace Learning
No full textInnovative work behaviour: Investigating the nature and facilitation of vocational teachers‘ contributions to innovation development
No full textThe goal of this thesis was to contribute to an understanding of the nature and facilitation of vocational teachers’ innovative work behaviour as a key element for the development of innovations in vocational colleges. Innovative work behaviour encompasses all physical and cognitive work activities employees carry out in their work context, either solitarily or in a social setting, to accomplish a set of tasks required for the development of an innovation. Innovations are new and potentially useful products or processes that address the problems and challenges of a particular work context and help to maintain or improve the current state of this context. Five prerequisite tasks for innovation development, that is, opportunity exploration, idea generation, idea promotion, idea realization, and reflection are distinguished. In this thesis a theoretical conceptualization of innovative work behaviour as a dynamic, context-bound construct is presented. This conceptualization advances previous work by taking into account the timely and socio-cultural interdependence of employees’ work activities, the fundamental relation of work activities to a particular work context, and the importance of reflective and social work activities for innovation and professional development.
The thesis encompasses five empirical and theoretical contributions that complementarily investigate the measurement and facilitation of innovative work behaviour. In particular, it is illustrated how innovative work behaviour can be measured as a dynamic, context-bound construct by grounding measurement on work activities employees have carried out in their work context during an episode of innovation development and by integrating the social and reflective components of innovation development. Furthermore, the studies with vocational teachers showed that innovations and individual contributions to their development represent a practically relevant aspect in vocational colleges and in vocational teachers’ work context for tackling problems and challenges inside and outside the classroom and for providing adequate job preparation for students. Finally, insight is provided into possibilities to facilitate vocational teachers’ innovative work behaviour. In this respect, it seemed that in vocational colleges the initiation of innovative work behaviour is driven by an interaction of contextual problems and opportunities with vocational teachers’ personal goals and needs. In addition, findings indicated that the performance of innovative work behaviour is determined by characteristics of professionalism as well as by vocational teachers’ intrinsic motivation, their self-directed individual perceptions, and the available social support
Fostering proactive behaviour: The role of work‐related reflection, psychological empowerment, and participative safety for innovative behaviour and job crafting
No full textThis contribution aimed at investigating how work-related reflection as cognitive efforts towards developing an understanding of work tasks, the surrounding work context, and one's professional competencies adds to the role of psychological empowerment and participative safety in predicting innovative behaviour and job crafting as two forms of proactivity. Quantitative data from 295 employees of micro, small, and medium-sized organizations in the information sector were collected with a cross-sectional questionnaire. For hypotheses testing, structural equation modelling was employed. The results of the study showed that work-related reflection and psychological empowerment were substantially related to innovative behaviour and job crafting while participative safety only played a minor role. These findings imply that jobs need to contain empowering and sufficiently complex work tasks that require reflection and provide occasions for reflective interactions to enable employees to create efficient routines and adapt to changes at work. Furthermore, experiences of empowerment need to be rooted in social interactions at work. Likewise, the value of reflection will only unfold if employees and supervisors regularly engage in reflectio
Innovative Work Behaviour in Vocational Colleges: Understanding How and Why Innovations Are Developed
No full textIn workplaces, innovative products and processes are required to address emerging problems and challenges. Therefore, understanding of employees' innovative work behaviour, including the generation, promotion, and realisation of ideas as components of this behaviour is important. In particular, what fosters innovation development and what triggers these activities is important for its promotion and adoption in contemporary workplaces. To investigate how and why innovations at work are developed and enacted, an explorative study comprising structured interviews with vocational teachers in the German vocational system was conducted. The teachers reported on activities they undertook during the development of a specific innovation. Furthermore, they provided information on factors that made this innovation necessary and that they were activated by. The study indicates that even when opportunities for innovation development existed in a workplace, the needs and goals of teachers were pivotal for these opportunities to be recognised and teachers' innovative work behaviour to be triggered. By analysing vocational teachers' work activities, we found that the development of innovations was a complex, iterative and primarily social process. By encouraging teachers to act on opportunities for change and by establishing a collaborative structure at schools, innovation development can be facilitated. We also found that throughout the development of an innovation, reflection played an important role. If the importance of reflective activities is acknowledged by workplaces such as these participants' vocational schools, this not only fosters innovations but also the teachers' professional development
Proactive Employees: The Relationship Between Work-Related Reflection and Innovative Work Behaviour
No full textA short measure of innovative work behaviour as a dynamic, context-bound construct
No full textPurpose This contribution aims at providing a measure of the overall construct of innovative work behaviour (IWB). As a consequence of the construct's dynamic, context-bound nature, the measure of IWB is based on concrete work activities, captures social and reflective activities, and is context-bound. By employing a short, one-dimensional measurement scale, the instrument enables valuable scientific and practical insights in an economical way. Design/methodology/approach The measure of IWB was evaluated with two samples of employees in different work contexts by conducting psychometric analyses, reliability analyses, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and correlation analyses with criterion variables. Findings The study provides evidence for the psychometric quality, reliability and validity of the measure of IWB. Research limitations/implications - The measure can be used to efficiently measure overall IWB. It thus enables the investigation of complex research models involving intervening mechanisms, interactions, or longitudinal effects. Further validation in other work domains and the inclusion of other criterion variables, such as innovative outcomes, is advised. Practical implications - The measure is useful for organizational practitioners to efficiently assess employees' IWB, to determine needs for supporting IWB at organizational level, and as a conceptual guideline for designing training or giving performance feedback during innovation projects. Originality/value The measure enables insights into the question how IWB can be fostered in practice. In addition, the contribution highlights that a measure of IWB needs to account for the construct's dynamic, context-bound nature and pay attention to usability as an important but often neglected quality criterion
