Innovative behaviors of occupational health managers: The mediating role of self-leadership

Occupational health managers independently perform various tasks, such as first aid, health promotion, job management, and work environment management, to protect the health of workers in an organization. Organizations generally have one or two occupational health managers, and their work environment significantly affects their job performance. Therefore, I explored the relationships among task identity, autonomy characteristics, self-leadership, and innovative behavior. I conducted a cross-sectional questionnaire survey among 180 occupational health managers in South Korea, and analyzed the data using structural equation modeling. The results showed that task identity and autonomy had a positive association with innovative work behavior and self-leadership; and self-leadership mediated the relationships between task identity, autonomy, and innovative work behavior. This suggests that it is important to create a work environment that enhances job initiative in consideration of the job characteristics of occupational health managers.