X-Factor for innovation: identifying future excellent professionals
Excellence figures prominently on the agenda in politics, education and industry and excellent professionals are in high demand. Industry seeks potentially excellent employees, because selectively investing in them yields a high return on investment (Boudreau & Ramstad, 2005). Talent Management is a rapidly growing field (Festing et al., 2013) because it is expected to help organizations achieve durable advantage over the competition (Collings & Mellahi, 2009; Lewis & Heckman, 2006). But to date, the field provides too little scientific insight into the identification of potentially excellent professionals.
Therefore in this study we wanted to identify which type of individual is capable of achieving professional excellence. Our main question therefore read: which individual antecedents predict professional excellence? We chose to focus on personality traits as individual antecedents because the value of personality for individual, team and organizational functioning has been well established (Judge & LePine, 2007).
More specifically we chose to focus on proactive personality - the entrepreneurial disposition –because it matches our description of the attitude of an excellent professional. Proactive individuals are likely to suggest new ways of doing things to improve performance (Seibert, Kraimer, & Crant, 2001). “Proactive people scan for opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere until they reach closure by bringing about change.” (Bateman & Crant, 1993, p. 105).
Our study took place at Saxion University, a medium-large University of Applied Sciences (UAS) in the East of The Netherlands, because the identification of talent preferably takes place at an early stage - so the talent is able to develop their potential (Guldemond et al., 2007). This university provides us with the ideal context to study potentially excellent professionals. In recent years Saxion developed excellence programs specifically aimed at the identification and development of (future) excellent professionals. We included this excellence context, referred to as the ‘honors context,’ in the design of our study.
After describing and analyzing current excellent professionals we identified crucial general behavior underlying excellent accomplishments that we included in our model as well, namely innovative behavior. We defined innovative behavior as both generating creative ideas and proactively implementing those ideas. Proactive personality is posited as the main predictor for innovative behavior, but more traditional traits were added to our model as well to determine the added value of proactive personality over these traits. The traditional traits we selected were openness, conscientiousness and extraversion.
Our research questions were: 1) how well do personality traits predict innovative behavior?, 2) which personality trait is the strongest predictor for innovative behavior? 3) to what extent do the cognitive-motivational states (self-efficacy) mediate the relationship between personality and innovative behavior?, and 4) to what extent does being in honors education moderate the relationship between personality and innovative behavior?
For this study we used a quasi-experimental and longitudinal research design, with one experimental and one control group. The experimental group consisted of students that were recruited and selected for one of several honors programs (N=249). The control group consisted of ‘regular’ bachelor students that did not participate in an honors program (N=345). Our analyses show that these two groups were comparable on our control variables.
We first created the measurement tool that measures the antecedents that relate to professional excellence via creativity and proactivity. Next we operationalized proactive and creative behavior and described their reliability and validity extensively. We approached students for measurements at three point in time, beginning at the start of the honors program and ending roughly three years later. For our analyses we used both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics in the form of hierarchal multiple regression analyses, with control variables.
Our results showed, in line with our expectations, that the personality antecedents predicted variance in innovative behavior over and above control variables. The predictive power of personality in this study however is little, for proactive behavior personality explained an extra 4% of variance over and above control variables (entire model explains 8% of variance) and for creative behavior an extra 2% (entire model explains 14% of variance). Proactive personality proved to be strongest predictor for proactive behavior and openness the strongest predictor for creative behavior. Our results further showed that self-efficacy mediated the relationship between personality and innovative behavior. Finally we found that honors context moderates the relationship between proactive personality and academic self-efficacy and that honors students, in contrast to the non-honors students, develop higher levels of proactive behavior over time.
In conclusion we found that both proactive personality and openness are relevant distal antecedents of innovative behavior. We also found that creative self-efficacy and academic self-efficacy are important proximal antecedents of innovative behavior. Finally, we found that participation in an honors program also influences innovative behavior (although only for proactive behavior) and achievement. Therefore in this study we identified several personality traits and cognitive-motivational states and a contextual variable that together predict some of the level innovative behavior of students.
This research contributes to our understanding of antecedents of (future) professional excellence. We have identified crucial personality traits for innovative behavior and we have concluded that the honors context positively influences innovative behavior, the development of innovative behavior and the level of achievement of students. We also now have a better understanding of the mechanisms through which context and personality influence a level of self-efficacy that in turn leads individuals to identify and grasp opportunities and change the status quo. Our longitudinal and quasi-experimental, mixed methods study allowed us to draw these conclusion and to gain insight into the complex interaction between individual and context.
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