Investigating the effects of self efficacy on innovativeness and the moderating impact of cultural dimensions

The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of self efficacy on the innovativeness of professionals within a cultural context. Innovativeness of employees is one of the coveted characteristics as previous research has shown that innovativeness contributes beneficially towards an organization’s competiveness and growth. On the other hand, self-efficacy is a construct which has been studied in the context of individual entrepreneurship, technology solutions, and task completion. The link between self-efficacy and innovativeness has not been studied and this research hypothesized a relationship between self efficacy and innovativeness of an individual. The study also investigated the mediating impact of cultural dimensions on this relationship. We found a positive relationship between self efficacy and innovativeness and found positive effects of the “individualism” dimension on this relationship. This has useful implications for assessing the innovation potential of an organization as well as for training employees in order to make the organization more innovation-ready in today’s competitive and flexible business environment. The study was conducted with data from 271 professional respondents in Turkey.