Inovar para engajar: uma análise da relação entre inovatividade organizacional percebida e engajamento no trabalho entre os servidores públicos municipais de Uberlândia

Abstract

Municipal public administration has been pressed to improve service quality and to modernize its work processes, an agenda that depends both on organizational change and on employees' willingness to sustain such change in daily practice. This dissertation examines the relationship between perceived organizational innovativeness and work engagement among civil servants of the Municipality of Uberlândia (PMU). The study draws on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory, according to which resources available in the work environment fuel the motivational process that sustains the individual's bond with his or her activity, and relies on open systems theory and on the multilevel perspective to justify the crossing from the organizational to the individual level. This is applied, quantitative research, carried out through a cross-sectional survey with 129 civil servants. Perceived organizational innovativeness was measured by eight items adapted from Wang and Ahmed (2004) and work engagement by five items from Siqueira et al. (2014), both on a seven-point Likert scale. Data were processed in Python 3 (descriptive statistics, reliability, dimensionality and group comparison) and in SmartPLS 4 (partial least squares structural equation modeling). Parallel analysis indicated a unidimensional structure for both scales. Engagement fell below the neutral point of the scale (M = 3.143), while perceived innovativeness stood practically on it (M = 3.963). The structural coefficient confirmed the hypothesis that perceived innovativeness precedes engagement (β = 0.438; t = 7.201; p < 0.001; R² = 0.192; f² = 0.238). Relevant differences were found by age group in engagement and by department in perceived innovativeness. The findings support a protocol of procedures aimed at strengthening engagement through the management of the innovation experience in the workplace.