O efeito dos preditores da competência digital de funcionários de uma universidade pública e o impacto no comportamento de trabalho inovador

Abstract

Digital competence plays an important role in higher education. The literature highlights the adoption and use of digital competence for the development of educational services in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), but it's still necessary to understand its influence on the innovative behavior of the public official. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of digital competence, based on the predictors’ infrastructure, integration, and digital management, on innovative work behaviors. The research was applied to 540 public employees of a Federal Institution of Higher Education (IFES) in northern Brazil. The response rate for this study was 33.5%. For data analysis, the Structural Equation Modeling approach by Partial Least Squares (PLS-SEM) was used. The results confirm hypotheses H1, H2 and H3 and indicate that public emplo yees with a high level of perception of digital competence more often develop challenging work to generate new innovative behaviors at work. Adherence to infrastructure, integration and digital management can help the institution to obtain behaviors aimed at innovation, thus, it is up to university public management to conduct them effectively. This research was limited to investigating the influence of digital competence on innovative work behaviors of public employees of a Brazilian IFES. Future studies may address other contextual factors in this relationship. One of the managerial implications is the need for Educational managers to support the construction of guidelines for educational and technological innovation to expand innovative behavior at work.