An Analysis of Factors Influencing Educational Innovation Competency: Practice in Basic Education Schools under the Jurisdiction of the Education Ministry

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the factors that influence innovation competency of basic education schools, and propose a practice for developing of innovation competency of basic education schools.

The relationships between the factors influencing the innovation competency were developed from competency-based view perspective, resource-based view perspective. The key elements for innovation competency of an organization are composed of managerial competency (Transformational leadership, innovation strategy, support from management and HR practice), transformation-based competency (organizational structure, organizational culture, organization learning and research and development), organizational resources (tangible resources: financial resource, physical resource and Intangible resources: human resources and organization’s knowledge), and organizational environment (government support, competition and environment uncertainty).

This study used mixed methods. The data from the qualitative study was used to supplement the information obtained from the quantitative study, which was the principal method of this study. The quantitative study was to test the influence of factors that affected innovation competency of schools providing basic education. The Data was collected from sample groups of 420 schools through a questionnaire related to the factors that affect innovation competency including the recommendation for developing innovation competency. Meanwhile 335 questionnaires, (79.76 percent) were returned. The qualitative study was conducted by exploring school’s documents and interviewing school administrators of 7 schools which won “one school, one innovation” award for three consecutive years in order to obtain data for the analysis of the key elements that affected innovation competency.

From testing the correlation factors that affected innovation competency, it was found that managerial competency, transformation-based competency and organizational resources had direct effect on innovation competency. Meanwhile organizational environment had no significant direct effects on innovation competency, but they had an indirect effect on innovation competency through managerial competency and organizational resources. This showed consistency with the analysis of data from the qualitative study, which showed that organizational environment had no great effect on innovation competency. In addition, the results of the qualitative study showed that managerial competency, transformation-based competency and organizational resources were important for innovation competency of organization.

The results of both quantitative and qualitative studies were developed to provide a practice for developing innovation competency, practical recommendation, including policy recommendation and proposals for future research.