Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of two climates for innovation constructs, namely, leadership and organisational culture, on workplace innovation and career satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach This study used structural equation modelling to test the data from 3,125 engineering professionals in the Australian Public Service (APS). Findings The structural model indicated that leadership for innovation and ambidextrous culture for innovation influenced workplace innovation which, in turn, improved career satisfaction. Moreover, modelling revealed a significant relationship between ambidextrous culture for innovation and career satisfaction. This study also investigated mediation effects and revealed both simple and sequential mediation paths in the model. It was found that improving workplace innovation and career satisfaction through recognition of an engineer’s contribution to their agency would assist in retaining and advancing in-house engineering expertise. Practical implications The structural model could be used to address current shortages of engineering professionals in the Commonwealth of Australia departments. The findings emphasise the importance of Commonwealth departments providing opportunities for their engineers to engage in creative and innovative projects which enhance their professional career. Originality/value This study fills the gap in the innovation literature by exploring the relationships through which socio-psychological factors affect workplace innovation and career satisfaction on the innovation process for engineering professionals in the APS.

Leadership plays a vital role in building the process, structures, and climate for an organisation to become innovative and to motivate team expectations toward innovations. This study explores the leadership styles that engineers regard as significant for innovation in the public sector. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to identify the principal leadership styles influencing innovation in the Australian Public Service (APS), using survey data extracted from the 2014 APS employee census comprising 3 125 engineering professionals in Commonwealth of Australia departments. EFA returned a two-factor structure explaining 77.6% of the variance of the leadership for innovation construct. In this study, the results from the EFA provided a clear estimation of the factor structure of the measures for leadership for innovation. From the results, the two factors extracted were transformational leadership and consideration leadership. In transformational leadership, a leader values organisational objectives, inspires subordinates to perform, and motivates followers beyond expected levels of work standards. Consideration leadership refers to the degree to which a leader shows concern and expressions of support for subordinates, takes care of their welfare, treats members as equals, and displays warmth and approachability. These findings highlight the role of leadership as the most critical predictor when considering the degree to which subordinates strive for creativity and innovation. Both transformational and consideration leadership styles are recommended to be incorporated into management training and development programs. This study also recommends that Commonwealth departments recruit supervisors who have both of these leadership styles before implementing innovative projects.

This paper examined the innovation process in the Australian Public Service (APS) using a Bayesian network (BN) founded on an empirically derived structural equation model.The focus of the BN was to examine the impact of leadership style and organisational culture on workplace innovation and career satisfaction in the APS. Using scenario analysis, the best combination of managerial actions for enhancing APS career satisfaction was determined. The results emphasise the benefit of encouraging management to adopt a transformational leadership style and instilling innovative culture in their organisation. In addition, innovative culture was a key driver of workplace innovation, which served to improve the career satisfaction of APS employees.Implications are discussed to propose practical strategies for organisations wish to encourage innovation among employees.

The purpose of this paper was to identify common themes from archival records related to innovation in the Australian Public Service (APS). A thematic analysis was conducted to review and evaluate archival records which consisted of transcripts from senior manager presentations at Innovation Month seminars from 2014 to 2018 and other related official documents. This empirical study addressed innovation from the leaders’ perspective, reflecting upon their experience. Analysing themes within archival records helped to gain insights from various perspectives of leaders on how they regard an innovation agenda for the APS. Three themes emerged from archival records: (1) innovation characteristics; (2) drivers of innovation; and (3) barriers to innovation. Synthesis of these drivers and barriers can provide important insights for senior APS managers on how they can enhance their organisations’ ability to innovate in order to respond to digital disruption challenges and opportunities. Variety of perspectives with leader’s perceptions informs about authors’ selection of the research question among consistent patterns and legitimates the salient themes as input for QSR NVivo 11.

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