Conclusions
Within the last few decades, innovation has become one of the most important factors for organizational growth (Salaman & Storey, 2002). Innovation within an organization is critical and plays a significant role in cost reduction and advanced service delivery mechanisms. It is also a key catalyst for growing economic productivity, creation of new products and services, and improvements in the efficiency of service delivery. This is certainly true for all industries and more pointedly the Papua New Guinea Public Sector. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether two factors: organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior are important contributors of organizational innovation. Also, this study aims to examine whether knowledge sharing functions as a mediator on the relationship of organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior to organizational innovation, respectively. Findings of this study reveal that organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior are significant determinants of innovation while knowledge sharing acts as an indirect significant determinant for the effects of organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior to organizational innovation. The findings of this study further provide important theoretical and practical implications for researchers and practitioners in the Papua New Guinea Public Sector.
Limitations
This study has a number of limitations that must be considered and addressed in the future research. Firstly, this study was conducted in Port Moresby, the capital city of Papua New Guinea that is highly urbanized and did not include other
public-sector agencies throughout the country. Therefore, sample’s representativeness is a notable concern of this study. A study with more national coverage could reveal more disparities in various regions and the sector is encouraged for future research.
Secondly, the population empirically studied were public-sector employees. Therefore, in the process of applying the results of the study to other kinds of occupational employees, care should be taken. Also, beware that the employees of those public agencies are full-time working professionals. Collecting data of employees from different contexts and categories can increase the generalizability of the research model of this study. Thirdly, this study measured attitudes to KS instead of the actual behavior to KS. Various studies have presented that behavior to KS and attitude to KS are different to some degree. Additionally, the affective commitment items in OC were used instead of all three components in OC. Finally, by means of survey method, this study is also limited for cross sectional design which implies that the population under study is obtained and analyzed from a representative subset. This technique undermines the changing patterns of the population across time which would could not represent the relationship between independent and dependent variables accurately.
Future Research Suggestions
There are various suggestions for potential future research. First, it is suggested for future research to examine OC, OCB, KS and OI at the workgroup and departmental levels. The size of the department and workgroups within an organization may influence in determining the extent to which employees differentially associate with their workgroups and departments. Second, this study focuses on public sector agencies which is different to that of the private agencies. Thus, it must be added that it would be persuasive and interesting for future research to do a comparative analysis study between public and private sector to relate and identify the different roles OC, OCB and KS in promoting OI. The outcome of such study will expand the understanding of
the knowledge of OC, OCB and KS and its impact on OI performance. Third, this study used attitudes to KS instead of the actual behavior to share knowledge in measuring knowledge sharing. Various studies indicated the extent to which these both differs.
Also, affective commitment items in OC was used rather than the all three components of OC. Hence, prospective research can consider expanding and investigating different dimensions of KS to see if they can mediate the relationship of OC and OCB with OI respectively. Similarly, whether or not other components of OC could influence the relationships amongst the dimensions. Finally, this study is restricted for cross sectional design. Thus, this study strongly recommends future research to use longitudinal analysis in order to avoid the setback of cross-sectional design.
Implications
Having examined the relationship amongst OC, OCB, OI and KS (mediator), the findings have several theoretical and practical implications.
Theoretical Perspective
From a theoretical perspective, this study makes important contributions to the OC, OCB, KS and OI literature within the research field. This study extends previous research by demonstrating empirical support for the role of OC and OCB on OI.
Besides, this study is the first to consider the effects of KS as a mediator in the relationship of OC and OCB with OI. The findings of this study may serve as a foundation for further study and analyses of organizational innovation performance within the public sector. Theoretically, the results of this study should enrich the understanding of the literature regarding the effects of OI, OCB and KS on the public-sector organizational innovation performance
Practical Perspective
From a practical perspective, this study presents empirical evidence that OC, OCB and KS have positive effects on innovation. First, organization citizenship
behavior contributes to innovation in which this research helps the top management to improve and create conducive environment to foster culture of innovation.
Additionally, organizational should design their policies in such a way that improves the organizational citizenship behavior of their employees to be more productive.
Furthermore, top management should recognize and support this behavior at all cost.
According to Scandura and Graen (1984), for the development of the organizational citizenship behavior amongst employee, top management should be provided with proper training and development programs so that their skills can be improved to develop their subordinates.
Secondly, this study discovered that there is a fairly high positive relationship between employee OC and OI. Therefore, top management should strive to develop and enhance employees’ organizational commitment, so that they are likely to become contributive for organizational innovation. Top management can take into consideration the personal characteristics of employees and address them in order to keep their employees loyal and committed to the organization. Personal characteristics are important factors in the development of an individual’s level of organizational commitment. Mathieu and Zajac (1990) have identified several personal characteristics such as age, gender, education, perceived competence and job satisfaction.
Furthermore, top management should also exhibit a high level of commitment to their subordinates. Committed employees bring added value to the organisation through their determination, proactive support, relatively high productivity and awareness of quality.
If employees are concerned about losing their jobs, this could imply that employees are not fully committed. This could also imply that employees need or request such as adequate resources, facilities and training, are not being met, thus they are likely to view their organization as not being committed to them.
Thirdly, the study recommends the top management to create a climate or culture in which employees feel psychological comfortable to share their knowledge in order to encourage more knowledge sharing within the organization which is crucial to innovation. Knowledge sharing is dependent on the individuals’ perception of organizational climate/culture in which they participate and their social relationships among individual workers for its creation, sharing and use. In the study by West and Anderson (1996), participative safety can be seen as a means of reducing workers’
resistance to change, encouraging commitment and producing a more human orientated culture. From this point of view, the presence of conducive climate may lead to willingness to knowledge sharing and innovation, substantially triggers off extra discretionary behaviours which improves the level of implementation of creative ideas of the workers. According to Tidd et al., (2005), providing a climate for innovation, workers go beyond the call of duty to ensure that the organisation meets its stated objectives.
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