Teachers’ Innovative Behaviors based on Stakeholder Expectations

Keywordsinnovation leadership schools stakeholders teachers

JEL Classification M10

Full Article

1. Introduction

The increasingly fierce competition between private schools requires teachers to be more innovative these days. The teacher’s innovative behavior is needed to be able to adapt to rapid environmental and social changes, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers also need to innovate to keep up with technology and learning developments. In addition, innovative teachers are also role models to develop students’ thinking and competitiveness (Thurlings et al., 2014).

Innovative behavior is defined as an effort to generate new ideas, socialize or promote these new ideas and apply them to work, groups and organizations to get benefits from their application (Janssen, 2000). The initial stage of this behavior is idea generation, which is the stage of generating new ideas as proposed solutions to encountered problems or discrepancies. The second stage is idea promotion which is the stage of seeking support from colleagues, superiors or sponsors for the new idea. While the last stage of this behavior is idea realization which is the stage of developing the testing of an innovation model and finally applying it to stakeholders (Janssen, 2000).

Other researchers (De Jong and Hartog, 2010) argue that innovative work behavior must begin with exploring opportunities before generating new ideas, promoting and implementing them. Opportunity exploration is an effort to find various problems, including problems that are not part of their job duties. This opportunity exploration stage is deemed unsuitable for the teaching profession because the teacher has found many problems and discrepancies in learning assignments. Teachers do not need to specifically look for problems because they are often found in their daily work. According to Thurling et al. (2014), most studies on teacher innovative behavior refer to three stages based on the definition of Janssen (2000) without using the opportunity of exploration stage.

Innovative behavior can be influenced by various factors, one of which is subjective norms, namely consideration of the feelings and expectations of others for innovative behavior (Zhang, Liu and Yang, 2021). The expectations of others will increase one’s self-expectations and motivation to behave creatively and innovatively. Carmeli and Schaubroeck (2007) found that there are three social norms that can have a positive influence on creative and innovative behavior, namely family expectations for creativity, leader expectations for creativity and consumers’ expectations for creativity. This study focuses more on the expectations of leaders and consumers as stakeholders, that come from work sources and assumed to be able to influence the creativity and innovation of teachers, instead of family expectations that come from non-work sources (Carmeli and Schaubroeck, 2007).

Key stakeholders to the learning process in schools, apart from the teachers themselves, also include the principal, learning coordinator and students (Cheung, Keung and Mak, 2019). The principal and coordinator are stakeholders from the school leadership element. Meanwhile, students are stakeholders from the school’s consumer elements. In addition to students, the stakeholders in the school consumer element are student’s parents because their participation is very important to improve the quality of education (Çayak and Karsantik, 2020).

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, several researchers have conducted studies on innovative behavior in school teachers (Scull et al., 2020; Suciati, 2020; Rahmawati and Hasanah, 2021). However, no research has been found that examines the innovative behavior of teachers based on the expectations of their stakeholders. This study aims to determine the effect of stakeholder expectations, especially leader expectations and customer expectations. The results of this study will have implications for school management policies in improving teacher innovative behavior.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Innovative Work Behavior

Jannsen (2000) defined innovative behavior as an effort to create, introduce and apply new ideas intentionally in a job, group, or organization to obtain certain benefits or advantages. There are three stages of behavior, namely idea generation, idea promotion and idea realization. Idea generation is the stage of generating useful new ideas in various areas, which are obtained through problems, discrepancies, unresolved matters and emerging trends. Idea promotion is the stage of involvement in social activities to find friends, backers, sponsors or coalitions of supporters for the ideas that have been generated. While idea realization is the stage of making a prototype or innovation model that can be tested, and finally applied to a person’s work role or in a group, or even to the entire organization (Jannsen, 2000).

According to De Jong and Hartog (2010), innovative work behavior includes exploring new opportunities and ideas, promoting them and implementing them. Before the idea generation stage there is idea exploration, which is the exploration of opportunities for various issues, even those issues that are not part of their daily work. Meanwhile, the next stages are idea championing which has the same concept as promotion idea and idea implementation which has the same concept as idea realization (De Jong and Hartog, 2010). However, in the teaching profession, the stage of idea or opportunity exploration is less essential to measure. Teachers find more of their innovative ideas through problems, discrepancies, unresolved issues and emerging trends in their teaching process without the need for special exploration. This is supported by the results of a review by Thurlings et al. (2014) which shows that most research on teacher innovative behavior refers to Janssen’s definition of three stages without measuring the exploration stage specifically.

2.2. Stakeholder Expectations

Stakeholder expectations of innovative behavior are similar with subjective norms, namely consideration of the feelings and expectations of others for innovative behavior (Zhang, Liu and Yang, 2021). The expectations of others will increase one’s expectations and self-motivation to behave creatively and innovatively. Carmeli and Schaubroeck (2007) found that there are three social norms that can have a positive effect on creative and innovative behavior, namely family expectations of creativity, expectations of creativity, and consumer expectations of creativity. This study focuses more on the expectations of leaders and consumers as stakeholders, which come from work sources and are considered to influence teacher creativity and innovation, rather than family expectations that come from non-occupational sources (Carmeli and Schaubroeck, 2007). The main stakeholders in the learning process in schools, apart from the teachers themselves, also include principals, learning coordinators, and students (Cheung, Keung and Mak, 2019). The principal and coordinator are stakeholders of the school leadership. Meanwhile, students are stakeholders from the school’s consumer elements. Apart from students, stakeholders in the consumer element of schools are parents because their role is very important to improve the quality of education (Çayak and Karsantik, 2020).

3. Method

This study used a quantitative approach with a correlational design. The population of this study were teachers in two private schools on the island of Java, Indonesia. There are many private schools on the island of Java so the competition among them is quite strong, thus the innovative behavior of teachers is very needed in this population. The respondents in this study amounted to 127 teachers from two private schools on the island of Java obtained through non-probability sampling. Respondents consisted of 35 men and 92 women. They have been teaching in schools for 1 to 22 years. Based on the level of teaching, there are 15 teachers who teach in playgroup and kindergarten, 47 teachers teach at elementary school, 34 teachers teach at junior high school and 31 teachers teach at senior high school.

The measurement of this research consists of the scale of the teacher’s innovative behavior and the scale of the subjective norm of creativity. The teacher innovative behavior scale was modified in the context of school teachers from the scale developed by Janssen (2000). This scale consists of three stages or dimensions, namely idea generation, idea promotion and idea realization. The idea generation dimension consists of three valid items with alpha reliability α=0.736. An example of an item in the idea generation dimension that has been modified is "I find or modify teaching methods and teaching aids in learning". The idea promotion dimension consists of three valid items with alpha reliability α = 0.813. An example of an item on the idea promotion dimension that has been modified is “I can convince interested parties to support the development of my innovative ideas in learning”. The idea realization dimension consists of three valid items with alpha reliability α = 0.726. An example of an item in the idea realization dimension that has been modified is "I introduce my innovative ideas systematically to students or their parents".

The subjective norm scale on creativity was modified from Carmeli and Schaubroeck (2007), especially on the source of leadership and consumers. In the context of teachers, the source of leadership is the principal and coordinators in the field of learning, while the source of consumers is the students and their parents. The leader expectations for creativity dimension consists of five valid items with alpha reliability α= 0.707. An example of an item on the leader expectations for creativity dimension is “My supervisors at school expect me to be a creative teacher”. The customer expectations for creativity dimension consists of four valid items with alpha reliability α=0.754. An example of an item on the customer expectations for creativity dimension is “Students and/or parents consider creativity important for my profession as a teacher”.

Data analysis of this research used multiple linear regression test to examine the effect of stakeholder expectations on innovative teacher behavior. This study does not require a normality test because according to Katz (2011) if the number of respondents is more than 100 subjects, the distribution can be assumed to be normal. The linearity test was also not carried out in this study because it has rarely been used in various studies, since the model or the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable formed from theoretical studies is usually assumed to be linear (Duli, 2019).

4. Results and Discussion

The results of multiple linear regression test obtained R = 0.504, R2 = 0.254, F = 21.233 and p < 0.001, so it is proven that there is an effect of stakeholder expectations for creativity on teacher’s innovative behavior with an effective contribution of 25.4%. However, the stepwise test results show that only customer expectation for creativity has a positive effect on teacher’s innovative work behavior (t = 0.420, p < 0.001). Meanwhile, the leader’s expectation for creativity has no positive effect on teacher’s innovative work behavior (t = -0.303, p < 0.762). The multiple linear regression results are described in Tables 1, 2, and 3.

Table 1. Model Summary

Table 2. Anova Results

Table 3. Coefficients of Regression Analysis

Leader expectation for creativity does not have an impact on the innovative behavior of teachers because in the competitive era, many school management implement a market orientation culture. Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown (2007) said that market orientation needs to be developed in improving school marketing strategies to win competition between schools. Market orientation culture consists of three dimensions where customer orientation is one of the most important dimensions in the culture. This culture demands that principals and their coordinators must also be consumer-oriented (Hemsley-Brown and Oplatka, 2012). This condition makes what is expected by the school leadership is a reflection of the expectations of its consumers, namely students and their parents. Thus, when the influence of the leader’s expectation is aligned with the customer’s expectation, the influence of the leader is no longer effective. All expectation of the leader for the teacher’s innovative work behavior are according by the expectation of the students and their parents so that the leader does not have a special influence on the innovative work behavior of the teacher. The results of this study provide practical implications for school management to further improve customer orientation so that their expectations for innovative teacher behavior are truly in accordance with the needs of school consumers, namely students and their parents.

The limitation of the study is the limited number of respondents from two private schools only on the island of Java, Indonesia. The effective contribution of 25.4% from the results of this study also shows that there are many other factors that influence the innovative behavior of teachers not recovered in this study, such as attitudes towards innovation and innovate intention (Zhang, Liu and Yang, 2021). Further research is suggested to examine other factors that may influence the innovative behavior of teachers in the wider study population.

5. Conclusions

There is an effect of stakeholder expectations on teacher’s innovative behavior. However, only customer expectation plays a role in increasing the innovative behavior of teachers. The practical implication for school management is to further increase customer orientation so that what they hope for the innovative behavior of teachers is truly in accordance with the needs of school consumers.

---

Author Contributions: Jimmy Ellya Kurniawan: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Writing - Original Draft, Writing - Review and Editing, Supervision. Kuncoro Dewi Rahmawati: Investigation, Resources. Evan Tanuwijaya: Software, Vizualization.

Acknowledgements: We acknowledge the support and generosity of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia (Kementerian Pendidikan, Kebudayaan, Riset, Dan Teknologi Republik Indonesia), as well as the 2022 Grant for Applied Higher Education Research (PTUPT) in conducting this research. The paper was presented at the 4th Asia-Pacific Conference on Education, Teaching and Technology 2022 - (AP-EduTeach2022), 25-26 July 2022, Singapore.

Funding: This research was funded by the 2022 Grant for Applied Higher Education Research (PTUPT), Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia (Kementerian Pendidikan, Kebudayaan, Riset, Dan Teknologi Republik Indonesia).

Conflicts of Interest: The authors state that they have no conflicts of interest.

References

1. Carmeli, A. and Schaubroeck, J., 2007. The influence of leaders’ and other referents’ normative expectations on individual involvement in creative work. Leadership Quarterly, 18(1), pp.35–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2006.11.001
2. Çayak S. and Karsantık İ., 2020. A stakeholder approach to the educational process: parental involvement. Enstitüsü Elektronik Dergisi, 11(Ek), pp.287-297. [online] Available at: https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/1439952
3. Cheung, A.C., Keung, C.P. and Mak, B.S., 2019. Examining the key stakeholders’ perceptions of student learning: Towards a paradigm shift in secondary education in Hong Kong. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 39(4), pp.532-547. https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2019.1604318
4. De Jong, J. and Den Hartog, D., 2010. Measuring innovative work behaviour. Creative and Innovation Management, 19(1), pp.23-36.
5. Duli, N., 2019. Metode Penelitian Kuantitatif: Beberapa Konsep Dasar untuk Skripsi dan Analisis Data dengan SPSS. Yogyakarta: Deepublish.
6. Hemsley-Brown, J. and Oplatka, I., 2012. Reflections on management and leadership of educational marketing: Looking toward the future. In The Management and Leadership of Educational Marketing: Research, Practice and Applications. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 267-277. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3660(2012)0000015014
7. Janssen, O., 2000. Job demands, perceptions of effort-reward fairness, and innovative work behavior. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 73, pp.287-302. http://dx.doi.org/10.1348/096317900167038
8. Katz, M.H., 2011. Multiavariable Analysis: A Practical Guide for Clinicians and Public Health Researchers. Cambridge University Press.
9. Oplatka, I. and Hemsley-Brown, J., 2007. The Incorporation of Market Orientation in the School Culture: an essential aspect of school marketing. International Journal of Educational Management, 21(4), pp.292-305. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513540710749519
10. Rahmawati, P.N. and Hasanah, E., 2021. Kreativitas dan inovasi guru dalam pembuatan materi guru pada masa pandemi. Jurnal Administrasi Pendidikan, 28(1), pp.113-124. https://doi.org/10.17509/jap.v28i1.30009
11. Scull, J., Phillips, M., Sharma, U. and Kathryn, G., 2020. Innovations in teacher education at the time of COVID19: an Australian perspective. Journal of Education for Teaching, 46(4), pp.497-506. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2020.1802701
12. Suciati, S., 2020. Improvement of teacher creativities and initiatives through online learning models in the COVID-19 pandemic period. Ideguru: Jurnal Karya Ilmiah Guru, 5(1), p.79. https://doi.org/10.51169/ideguru.v5i1.131
13. Thurlings, M.; Evers, A. and Vermeulen, M., 2014. Toward a model of explaining teachers’ innovative behavior: a literature review. Review of Educational Research, XX (X), pp.1–42. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654314557949
14. Zhang, Z. Liu, M. and Yang, Q., 2021. Examining the External Antecedents of Innovative Work Behavior: The Role of Government Support for Talent Policy. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18 (1213), pp.1-17. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18031213

Article Rights and License

Corresponding Author