ORGANIZATIONAL AGILITY AND EMPLOYEE INNOVATIVE WORK BEHAVIOR IN HIGHER EDUCATION OF PAKISTAN: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF CREATIVE SELF-EFFICACY

Abstract

Pakistan Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are working in an ever dynamic and complicated environment whereby there has been a rapid change in technology, there has been an augmenting competition globally, and there has been an augmented expectation of socio-economic impact. Even with reforms on the policy level and quality assurance measures, a significant number of universities remain bureaucratic in nature and their structures of governance show centralized and inflexible nature to encourage employee-level innovation. Based on the Social Cognitive Theory, this paper evaluates the impact of organizational agility on the innovative behavior of employees and explores the mediation of creative self-efficacy in the Pakistani higher education industry. The sample size used was 390 academic staff members in the private universities within Lahore and Islamabad, thus a quantitative, cross-sectional research design was used in this study. The hypothesized relationships were tested using Structural Equation Modeling, which was generated using the Partial Least Squares approach (PLS-SEM). The findings reveal a large positive impact of organizational agility on employee innovative behavior, which implies that flexible structures, flexible processes, and responsive decision-making positively influence innovation within academic staff. Moreover, creative self-efficacy moderates this relationship to some extent, which reflects the significance of employee trust in their creative abilities in putting organizational conditions into innovative practices.

The study can add to the body of research on organizational agility and innovation by offering empirical data of an emerging country, where in many cases institutions of higher education are limited by structural and cultural barriers. In practice, the conclusions highlight the necessity of a university leadership and policymakers to facilitate agile governance processes and enrich creative self-efficacy by enabling facilitating supportive policies and constant professional development programs to encourage sustainable innovation at higher education institutions in Pakistan.