Suchergebnisse

Public servants' creativity is the origin of innovations, improvements and solutions to policies/services and crucial to serving public interests. Public servants, however, differ strongly in pioneering creativity—proactive generation of radical and original ideas. Using SEM on Flitspanel cross-sectional survey data from 930 Dutch public servants, this preregistered study tested hypotheses that this results from public servants being required to creatively "think outside-the-box" whilst remaining "inside-the-box" of formalized rules/procedures; a struggle that may demotivate and hamper pioneering creativity. Evidence is found for negative relations between formalization and two dimensions of pioneering creativity and positive relations between intrinsic motivation and all three dimensions of pioneering creativity, though no evidence is found for a mediation indicating that formalization hampers creativity through demotivation. Findings provide a detailed and nuanced understanding of how public servants' creativity appears affected by formalization and motivation, how these concepts interrelate in the public sector, indicating corresponding HR strategies/tactics.

AbstractPublic sector creativity—public servants coming up with novel and useful ideas—is the origin of solutions and innovations central to public sector organizations' ability to optimally serve society's interests. Despite its relevance and argued limitations, an adequate scale and framework to assess public servants' creativity remained absent. Using three quantitative (n = 2434/n = 1157/n = 621) and two qualitative datasets, this state‐of‐the‐art preregistered study provides a novel, valid, reliable, comprehensive but succinct multidimensional measurement tool allowing detailed assessment of states and changes of public servants' creativity by academics and practitioners. To aid academics and practitioners' understanding of the scale and public sector creativity, it also provides a supplementary theoretical framework in line with the data structure of the scale that compresses and structures extant theory on creativity while emphasizing what is indicated as important in the public sector. The findings shed light on the nature of public sector creativity as an aggregate and multidimensional construct.

AbstractThis systematic literature review analyses how public servants apply workplace creativity to come up with ideas for public sector innovations, defining public sector creativity and analyzing its practices, features, trends, and hiatuses in knowledge for which we provide a future research agenda. Creativity is the origin of innovation. Public sector creativity, however, is theoretically undefined and underexamined, resulting in unclarity on what constitutes public sector creativity. We define public sector creativity as "public servants coming up with novel and useful ideas through various practices." Our findings indicate that public servants apply at least six taxonomically distinctive creative practices, and although they are involved to different extent in generating the initial idea and thus do not always generate ideas autonomously, they are creative in finding alternative ways to come up with ideas. However, our review indicates hiatuses in knowledge on public sector creativity, for which we provide a future research agenda.

PurposeThis study examines the effects of perceived leadership styles on the perceived creativity and innovation of public servants working in a rapidly developing country while shedding light on the internal causal dynamics of these effects.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data are collected from 568 Qatari public servants working in a variety of public sector organizations. Data are analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM) employing SmartPLS.FindingsA significant relationship between perceived leadership styles and public servants' self-perceived creativity is found, with psychological empowerment as a mediating variable. Public servants that perceive their leaders as conveying transformational, transactional and servant leadership styles are found to have significantly higher self-perceived creativity, whereas authentic leadership does not have a significant positive effect. This finding indicates that transformational, transactional and servant leadership styles appear to impact public servants' creativity. This impact corresponds with findings from research on the relationship between leadership styles and creativity in the private sector. The results of this study confirmed the mediating effect of psychological empowerment, apart from authentic leadership.Originality/valueThe findings shed light on the relationship between perceived leadership styles and the self-perceived creativity of public servants working in a rapidly developing country, its causal dynamics and how these effects relate to corresponding findings in the private sector. The ensuing practical implications offer guidelines on how to organize leadership to maximize creativity and innovation in the public sector, especially in rapidly developing countries.