Innovative work behaviour, red tape, political and interpersonal trust in local public sector: a comparative study of Estonia and Norway

Abstract

Innovation has a growing part in the public sector, meaning that the employees of public organizations are in one way or another, expected to participate in innovative activities. Innovation at a workplace is in the research described as innovative work behaviour (IWB) and for organizations to be able to facilitate the IWB, there needs to be an understanding of what even influences employee’s innovative work behaviour. Thus, this master’s thesis explores innovative work behaviour determinants in the context of the public sector. Based on factors influencing IWB and contextual settings of public sector organizations three possible determinants - supervisor-employee trust, political trust, red tape – are under observation. Moreover, previous research suggests considering differences created by country contexts, thus, two countries chosen based on recent regime differences, are compared with one another. More specifically the thesis explores the relationships between national differences impacting innovative work behaviour through the determinants. The data for the thesis was collected from 173 civil servants working in municipalities in Estonia and Norway. It was analysed with IBM SPSS program and the extension PROCESSES v3.5 by Andrew F. Hayes, using a parallel multiple mediation method. The results show that national differences influence political trust, which is also proved to be a determinant for IWB. Thus indirectly, national differences through political trust influence civil servants’ innovative work behaviour. Moreover, the analysis suggests that IWB and political trust are both multidimensional and the impacts on dimensions differ. On the contrary, national differences do not significantly influence supervisoremployee trust and red tape, which are also proven to not determine IWB. The study is limited by the sample size which does not allow to generalize the results to a wider population. The anonymity and genericity limit the thesis by not allowing to elaborate on the background of the responses and non-responses. Lastly, the study is limited by the determinants and measurements chosen for the study, because making changes to either one of them may create different results. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this thesis is the first research to explore the impacts of political trust on local civil servants’ engagement in innovative work behaviour, and first to explore the impact of national differences on IWB and its determinants. Overall, the thesis contributes to the understanding of innovative work behaviour in the public sector context.