1.1 Introduction
Innovation by itself, cannot be described as a single process, rather, it can be described as a multifaceted process. From this perspective, individual innovation begins with problem recognition and the generation of ideas or solutions, either novel or adopted. Another key stage in this process, involves the innovative individual seeking sponsorship for ideas and attempting to build a coalition of supporters for it. The final stage of the innovative process involves completing the idea by producing a prototype or model of the innovation, which can now be felt, experienced, diffused, mass-produced, and turned into productive use or institutionalized. The research work done on the characteristics and behaviours associated with innovative people in organizations is immense, both in magnitude and diversity. This has resulted into a lack of cohesive theoretical understanding of how individual creativity and innovative behaviours operate in organizations. Hence, the study of what motivates or enables individual innovative behaviour is crucial.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
In recent years, a severe global financial crisis has led to economic downturn in most countries across the world. Consequently, it has become a great challenge for many organizations to remain profitable and to survive in their markets. Particularly, during times of operating in the shadow of a paralyzed international financial system, the crucial importance of organizations and their employees to stay innovative cannot be overemphasized.
Individual employees need to be willing and able to innovate if a continuous flow of innovation is to be realized (Janssen, 2000). Innovation and creativity has been used as synonyms by many scholars, while some were able to distinguish the two concepts. Mumford & Gustafson, (1988) said Creativity has to do with the production of novel and useful ideas and innovation has to do with the production or adoption of useful Ideas and idea implementation (Kanter, 1988; Van de Ven, 1986). Though creativity is often described as doing something for the first time anywhere or creating new knowledge, while innovation covers the adaptation of products or processes from outside an organisation, in practice idea generation is only one stage of the multistage process of innovation. Thus Scott & Bruce, (1994) viewed innovation as a multistage process, with different activities and different individual behaviours necessary at each stage.
Frymire (2006) argues that “the biggest challenge today is not finding or hiring cheap workers, but rather hiring individuals with the brainpower (both natural and trained) and especially the ability to think creatively.” The ability to continuously innovate and improve products, services and work processes is nowadays crucial for organisations (De Jong & Den Hartog, 2007). In the current economic climate, there is evidence to back the increasing importance of innovation. According to Economic-Downturn Websiste, “During economic downturns innovation is the single most important condition for transforming the crisis into an opportunity.” Innovation is critical for organizational long-term prosperity, particularly in dynamic markets (Balkin et al, 2000). In view of today's economic climate, increasing global competition, and rapidly changing organizations, an organization’s ability to innovate is regarded as a key factor for success (Shipton et al, 2006).
It is very important to clearly define innovation and to distinguish it from related concepts such as creativity, entrepreneurship, adaptability, originality, productivity and novelty. In the past, several research papers did not give a clear differentiation between the constructs creativity and innovation, which has led to a misunderstanding as regards the antecedents and outcome of creativity and innovative behaviour in the organization. In a bid to clear the air of doubt, Patterson (2004) argues that creativity and innovation are overlapping constructs, but the main distinction is with regard to novelty. Creativity is exclusively concerned with generating new and entirely original ideas. Innovation is a broader concept as it also encompasses the application of new ideas to produce something new and useful, usually in the context of groups, organizations, societies.
Innovation is often referred to as a process, because implementing new ideas necessarily involves influencing others, whereas, creativity could be achieved in isolation. Employee innovation goes beyond individual creativity as it also concerns the extent to which employees implement and sustain innovations. In the Organizational psychology literature, West and Farr (1990) emphasized the positive nature of innovation “…the intentional introduction and application within a role, group or organization of ideas, processes, products, or procedures, new to the relevant unit of adoption, designed to significantly benefit the individual, group, the organization or wider society.” In 2003, the UK department of Trade and Industry adopted a more concise definition of innovation as “the successful exploitation of new ideas.”
Innovation theory has repeatedly stressed that innovation is broader than only creativity and also includes the implementation of ideas (King and Anderson, 2002). Thus, innovation does not only include idea generation, but also behaviours needed to implement ideas and achieve improvements that will enhance personal and or business performance. Recently, organizations are paying attention to their human resources to produce innovative behaviours and consequently innovations (Carmeli et al., 2006), because innovations are derived from the ideas that come from the individuals in the workplace. Firms depend on their employees with creative ideas and efforts (Soussa, 2011). Individual innovation behaviour in the workplace is considered to be the main pillars of high-performing organizations (Carmeli et al., 2006). Finding out motivators and enablers of individual innovation behaviour would be a great contribution towards understanding individual innovation behaviour and organizational innovation and success (Wu et al., 2011).
Therefore, in Lagos State where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Personality as a Predictor of Innovation Behaviour of some selected telecommunication Workplace in Nigeria.
1.3 Statement of Problems
In business today, firms must innovate on a continuous basis to stay competitive and to survive in the long run. Employees can innovate either because it is part of their job description or by expressing voluntary innovative behaviour (Dörner, 2012). Therefore, since innovation is expected from employees either as part of their job description or they do it voluntarily, it is important to know if the personality of these individuals will serve as a major factor that will trigger the ability to innovate new ideas, that will sustain the organization and keep the business running especially in a competitive environment.
The personality traits to be considered during this study are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Very little published research literature has been done in Nigeria on the relationship between innovative behaviour and its relationship with personality traits in the workplace. This study aims to fill the gap in knowledge by seeking to find out the relationship that exists between innovative behaviour and personality traits in the workplace.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study
The aim of the study is to scrutinize the Personality as a Predictor of Innovation Behaviour in the Workplace. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:
- To determine the relationship between extraversion and innovative behavior;
- To investigate the correlation between agreeableness and innovative behavior;
- To predict innovative behaviour from conscientiousness;
- To determine the relationship between neuroticism and innovative behavior; and
- To understand the relationship between openness and innovative behaviour in workplace.
1.5 Research Questions
The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:
- Is there any significant relationship between extraversion and innovative behaviour?
- Is innovative behaviour from conscientiousness predictable?
- What is the correlation between agreeableness and innovative behaviour?
- What is the relationship between neuroticism and innovative behaviour?
- What is the relationship between openness and innovative behaviour?
