HRZZ project INPUBWORK (english webpage)

Optimally utilizing the innovative potential of employees has become a major human resource challenge within the global and highly competitive business environment. Recent studies have confirmed job characteristics as a critical antecedent and a driving force for innovative work behaviour. However, we still know little about how work characteristics change over time, how they interact, which are the most important ones and how they can be successfully changed. Innovative work behaviour is especially needed and understudied within state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Their employees are largely unmotivated and unproductive, and organizations are ineffective and non-competitive. Such negative work attitudes and practices hinder innovative work behaviour and result in non-adequate business results. As a part of the project, an in-depth research on work design practices will be carried out in the Croatian public sector. Longitudinal and quasi-experimental research design envisions tailored job interventions at the micro level in a real-life work setting. Particular set of job characteristics will be modified and aligned with personal- and job-related characteristics of public employees, what should provide and assure increased level of idea generation and, in the end, result in more frequent process improvements within sampled public companies.