The Effects of Employee Mindset on Employee Innovativeness: A Comparative Study Between Professional and Non-Professional Groups among Government Staff in Putrajaya, Malaysia

This comparative study was conducted to identify the effects of employee mindset on employee innovativeness among civil servants in two ministries and one government agency in Malaysia, enabling a deeper understanding on the contributing factors of employee innovativeness in civil service in Malaysia. The findings revealed that there were significant and positive relationships among and between all dimensions of employee mindset and employee innovativeness among professional grade employees but only three dimensions of employee mindset (cognitive complexity, boundary spanning and adaptability) were associated to employee innovativeness among the non-professional group. Two other dimensions of employee mindset (cosmopolitanism and entrepreneurial mindset) were not found to be related to employee innovativeness for this group. In addition, it was found that all dimensions of employee mindset influenced employee innovativeness among the professional group of employees while for the non-professional group, only three out of five dimensions of employee mindset had significant influence towards employee innovativeness. It is recommended that employees in the non-professional group should be guided and rewarded for any innovative ideas they presented. Also, for the management to reinvent work processes to serve the people better. In addition, all civil servants should be allowed to use their own creativity complete their work and not through the conventional, repetitive way of doing things.