| Abstract [eng] |
This master’s thesis examines the relationship between employees’ personal development and organizational innovativeness. The study analyses how employees’ inner growth, development and purposeful learning contribute to an organization’s ability to generate and implement new ideas, remain competitive and adapt to a rapidly changing environment. The theoretical part shows that personal development is understood not only as the improvement of professional skills, but as a complex, continuous, employee-initiated process that involves conscious behaviour, value change and competence development. The thesis draws on the personal growth construct developed by Robitschek et al. (2012), which comprises four dimensions: readiness for change, planning, use of resources and intentional behaviour. Organizational innovativeness in this thesis is viewed as the combined effect of organizational culture, employee behaviour and strategic direction, rather than merely the implementation of technological innovations. Innovativeness is conceptualized as a multidimensional phenomenon including creativity, openness to change, future orientation, risk taking and proactivity. From a theoretical perspective it is argued that employee self-development and purposeful growth create the prerequisites for innovative organizational performance. The methodological part presents a quantitative study aimed at empirically assessing the impact of employees’ personal development on organizational innovativeness. Data were collected using a questionnaire survey and a standardized instrument based on the scales developed by Robitschek et al. (2012) and Ruvio et al. (2014). The sample consisted of employees from various Lithuanian organizations, occupying different positions and having different lengths of work experience. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analysis with IBM SPSS Statistics 31.0. The empirical results revealed that the employees participating in the study demonstrate a relatively high level of personal development. The assessment of organizational innovativeness indicated high levels of creativity and proactivity but a lower level of risk taking, suggesting that organizations tend to encourage idea generation while being more cautious about the implementation of riskier innovations. The analysis confirmed statistically significant positive relationships between all dimensions of personal development and all dimensions of organizational innovativeness, thus supporting the assumption that employee development is an important element of an innovative organizational culture. Regression analysis showed that the dimensions of personal development explain a significant proportion of the variance in organizational innovativeness. Planning was identified as the most important dimension of personal development, exerting the strongest effect on organizational creativity, future orientation and risk taking. The study empirically confirmed the hypotheses regarding the impact of personal development on organizational innovativeness. From a practical perspective, the thesis shows that for organizations seeking to enhance innovativeness, technical training alone is not sufficient. It is important to foster employees’ self-development, particularly their planning skills, and to create a supportive environment in which individual growth is linked to the organization’s strategic objectives. |
