HKU-USC-IPPA Conference on Public Policy
Paper Proposal
Abstract Number: T06P01-03
Panel
T06 - Special Topic
Author
Professor Sung Min Park, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Governance,
Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea
Co-Author
Miss Min Yong Kim, Ph D. Candidate, Graduate School of Governance,
Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea
Miss Hyo Joo Lee, Ph D. Student, Graduate School of Governance, Sungkyunkwan
University, Seoul, Korea
Title
What Drives Public Employee’s Creative Engagement
Abstract
Nowadays most modern organizations encourage creativity as a core competency for
their employees (Amabile, 1996; Choi, 2004) indicates that creativity can be analyzed
at different levels such as the individual, managerial, and organizational levels.
Creativity is generally defined as the production of novel, useful ideas or problem
solutions (Amabile, 1996; Sternberg, 1988; Weisberg, 1988) denote this as ‘both the
process of idea generation or problem solving and the actual idea or solution’ (Amabile
et al., 2005). The existence of creative people and their performance plays an
indispensable role both in public and private sector organizations. Hence, exploring and
analyzing the sector-specific dimensions of public entrepreneurial leadership in the
public sector are extremely crucial. According to Egan (2005) promotion of creativity
is a necessity, not an option, for most organizations seeking response to: (a) advancing
technology; (b) a changing environment; (c) changing organizational structures or
strategies; (d) overcoming competitors that improve their products, processes, and
services; (e) evolving customer desires; and (f) evolving societies influenced
increasingly by global issues and diversity. By investigating and utilizing different
types of creative climate (i.e., perceived task performance, entrepreneurial leadership,
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and organizational performance) in the Korean and Chinese public sector, this study
can contribute to finding important factors that increase innovation and creativeness
levels and serve public managers and officials for innovation management.
This study will proves and tests the impacts creative engagement among Korean and
Chinese public employees. Using a 2015 Korean and China Public Sector Survey, an
antecedent-outcome model is developed with analyses how different types of
individual, managerial, and organizational capacity (i.e., perceived task performance
(individual level); entrepreneurial leadership (managerial level); organizational
performance (organizational level) affect creative engagement using hierarchical and
multi-level ordering statistical techniques. In addition, this study will suggest
theoretical and policy implications for future research in Korean and Chinese public
sector.
Reference
Amabile, T. M. (1996). Creativity and innovation in organizations (Vol. 5). Boston:
Harvard Business School.
Amabile, T. M., Barsade, S. G., Mueller, J. S., & Staw, B. M. (2005). Affect and
creativity at work. Administrative science quarterly, 50(3), 367-403.
Choi, J. N. (2004). Individual and contextual predictors of creative performance: The
mediating role of psychological processes. Creativity Research Journal, 16(2-3), 187199.
Sternberg, R. J. (1988). 5 A three-facet model of creativity. The nature of creativity:
Contemporary psychological perspectives, 125.
Weisberg, R. W. (1988). 6 Problem solving and creativity. The nature of creativity:
Contemporary psychological perspectives, 148.
Keyword
Individual capacity, Managerial capacity, Organizational capacity, Perceived task
performance, Entrepreneurial leadership, Organizational performance, Creative
engagement
Other Information
Sung Min Park is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public
Administration/Graduate School of Governance at Sungkyunkwan University. His
primary research interests are public management, public human resources
management, organizational behavior, and quantitative research methods. His work
appears in American Review of Public Administration, Review of Public Personnel
Administration, International Public Management Journal, Public Personnel
Management, International Journal of Human Resource Management, International
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Review of Administrative Sciences, and Public Management Review. Email:
[email protected].
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