Innovative vs Bureaucratic Organizational Culture: Importance for Proactivity of University Students

On April 18 Abramova O.A. (Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, HSE) took part in the "Culture matters" research seminar with the report "Innovative vs Bureaucratic Organizational Culture: Importance for Proactivity of University Students".

Proactive behavior in recent years has received new attention in research and is seen as an important component of a successful life strategy in an organization. Students' pro-activity is a predictor of their success in the future, and creating conditions in educational institutions that increase their pro-activity is an important task of education.

The study (N = 191) considers two types of organizational culture: bureaucratic and innovative, on the example of different faculties of the university. The task of the study was to get ahead of what mediators organizational culture affects perceived personal proactivity and proactive behavior at the group level. It was assumed that significant mediators of the relationship between organizational culture and students' proactiveness would be perceived autonomy, trust in the organization, satisfaction with university studies, and innovative self-efficacy. The analysis of the proposed 4 mediation models confirmed the hypotheses about the positive mediation connection between the innovative culture and perceived proactivity at the individual and group levels through organizational trust and innovative self-efficacy, as well as between the innovative culture and perceived proactivity at the university. The negative connection between the bureaucratic organizational culture and the pro-activity of students through the same mediators turned out to be insignificant.

Thus, the creation of an innovative climate of an organization with a high level of trust, innovative self-efficacy and satisfaction with studies leads to the choice of a proactive pattern of behavior in educational activities by students.