HRM Practice and Innovative Work Behavior: Organisational Politics as Mediator and Personal Locus of Control as Moderator

Abstract

The general objective of this study was to examine the effect of organisational politics on the relationship between HR practice and the innovative work behaviours of selected senior staff of the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. A secondary objective was to examine the moderation of personal locus of control on the association between organisational politics and employees innovative work behaviour. The study adopted an explanatory research design, using a purely quantitative approach. The target population comprised of all senior staff of the University of Cape Coast. The G*Power 3.1 software was used to select 119 members into the sample for this study. Data were collected through a self-administered survey questionnaire and analysed, using the Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) technique. The findings of this study suggest that organisational politics has a statistically significant positive influence on the link between human resource management practice and employees’ innovative work behaviour. Unexpectedly, the paper also found that the link between organisational politics and personal locus of control, on one hand, and that between personal locus of control and innovative work behaviour, on the other hand, were statistically non-significant and negative. Therefore, we recommend that since organisational politics is an inevitable element in every human institution, any attempt by management to improve the innovative work behaviours of employees must take into account the possible effect of organizational politics on the said intervention.