Employee Voice and Innovative Behavior in the Public Sector

Many individuals have the ability to generate effective ideas but several times they find it hard to turn these ideas into practice. The difficulty is even greater for public servants, as they are often faced with several additional obstacles and challenges. Seeking to delineate employee innovative behavior (and idea realization in particular), this study examines the role of employee voice, taking also into consideration the moderating role of an organizational and a personal characteristic, namely organizational climate and overqualification respectively. Analyzing responses from 346 public servants, working in different public organizations in Greece, we found that employee voice does enhance their innovative behavior. Moreover, results showed that that only organizational climate independently moderates the above relationship. Interestingly, the joint test of double moderation - in which both moderators were taken into account - revealed a significant and positive combined effect.