In the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, each organization is striving toward innovation to adapt to the new environment. Public organizations are no exceptions to this wherein innovation is being promoted for improved performance in a rapidly...
In the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, each organization is striving toward innovation to adapt to the new environment. Public organizations are no exceptions to this wherein innovation is being promoted for improved performance in a rapidly changing environment. However, in the process of innovation, the organization’s public officials may resist changes due to the lack of trust, obsession with past success, distrust of change management strategies, relatively high expenditures, threats to value and accidents, and rejection of interference.
Various public organizations are implementing change management to overcome members’ resistance, achieve innovation, and increase performance. This study empirically examines the effect of change management to achieve innovation and the mediating effect of public officials’ innovative behavior in the relationship between awareness about change management and work performance.
Therefore, in this study, clarity of organizational goals, transformational leadership, participation and communication, and education and training were composed through literature review as a change management technique for public organizations. Additionally, an empirical analysis was conducted by adding public service motivation, which is an altruistic motivation that public officials prominently possess.
The data used for the analysis were from the Public Service Recognition Survey 2018 by the Korea Institute of Public Administration (KIPA). This survey was conducted on 2000 general public officials belonging to 46 central government offices and 2000 general public officials from 17 regional governments. Hayes' process macro analysis (Model 4) was performed to examine the relationship between public officials’ perceptions of change management, innovative behavior, and work performance. The analysis yielded the following main results.
First, change management (clarity of organizational goals, transformational leadership, participation and communication, education and training, and public service motivation) is crucial for inspiring public officials’ innovative behavior. Change management not only resulted in innovative behavior, but also ultimately improved public officials’ work performance.
Second, public officials’ innovative behavior played a mediating role between change management (clarity of organizational goals, transformational leadership, participation and communication, education and training, motivation for public service) and work performance. It was confirmed that innovative behavior is essential for promoting work performance through change management.
Third, it was confirmed that among the factors of change management, public service motivation had the greatest impact on innovative behavior and work performance. For the organization’s survival, the private organization activates its members’ crisis consciousness, alleviates their resistance, and changes them. However, it was confirmed that public organizations that are legally guaranteed stability can ease resistance and change members’ resistance through emphasis on and management of public service motivation, which is an altruistic motive.
This study empirically verified the mediating effect of public officials' innovative behavior in the relationship between change management perception and work performance and the importance of managing PSM among the change management factors in public organizations. This entails several practical implications for implementing change management in public organizations in the future.