Paper in focus: Will trust move mountains? Fostering radical ideas in public organizations

Avilton Júnior, PhD student in Business Management at FEUC who will defend his thesis on 11 November, together with his supervisors and CeBER researchers Filipe Coelho and Isabel Dimas, have published the article Will trust move mountains? Fostering radical ideas in public organisations in the prestigious Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. The article is available at https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae019

With the emergence of the New Public Management and New Public Governance paradigms, promoting creativity as a way of responding to the needs of an increasingly demanding public has become crucial. However, the research carried out in the field of public administration has devoted little attention to studying the factors that make workers more creative, particularly when it comes to radical creativity, which involves introducing substantial changes to existing practices. Thus, the published study seeks to identify contextual factors that affect radical creativity in the public sector. Based on Deci and Ryan's Self-Determination Theory, the study reveals how leaders' trust in the team, by being a source of satisfaction for the three basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence and social connection), will generate the necessary intrinsic motivation and a favourable context for the emergence of radically new ideas. This study also identified a mediating effect of perceived organisational support on the relationship between the leader's trust in the team and radical creativity. Finally, the authors also observed that a collaborative group climate intensifies the positive relationship between leader trust and the generation of radical ideas by civil servants. Overall, the results show that by creating an environment of trust, support and collaboration, managers can overcome the constraints to innovation created by the bureaucratic and formal context that characterises the public sector.

Abstract

Demands for greater quality of public services and enhanced efficiency have intensified changes in public organizations. Not surprisingly, these organizations are increasingly searching for new and useful ideas, including disruptive ones, to meet current demands. Whereas previous studies on team radical creativity have focused on the influence that subordinates’ trust in the supervisor has on this type of creativity, this work innovates by testing the leader's trust in the team as an antecedent. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory, we further add to knowledge by considering the mediating role of team perceived organizational support for creativity and the moderating role of team collaborative climate. The research model was tested with a sample of 228 teams from public organizations with data collected from two sources at three moments in time. We found that the leader's trust in the team has a direct positive relationship with team radical creativity and an indirect positive relationship with creativity via team perceived organizational support. We also observed that team collaborative climate positively moderates the relationship between the leader's trust in the team and team radical creativity. These results deliver meaningful theoretical and practical insights into how organizations, especially public ones, can improve team creativity and thus enhance organizational performance.