Unfolding the three step process of extra innovative behavior.

Observing the paradox of public employees who do dare to implement their self-starting innovative ideas, in a non-supportive environment, as it is the public sector during the financial crisis, was the cue to investigate the following research question: How do some employees go the extra mile and produce self initiated innovative outcomes in non-supportive environment while others do not? In order to unfold such behavior (namely extra-innovative behavior), we got inspired by the work of Hannah Arendt, where to act means taking an initiative while revealing ourselves to the human world. Her perspective along with transcendent behavior, extra role behaviors, institutional entrepreneurship, job crafting and innovative behavior was the theoretical base of our work. To further investigate the issue we performed an inductive qualitative study in 10 public organizations, consisted of 20 semi-structured in depth interviews and on site observations. Our results indicate that extra-innovative behavior is developed through three stages. Firstly, proactive, skillful and authentic employees jump from non-action to job crafting behavior. Secondly, courageous, other focused and supported employees engage themselves in individual innovative behavior and thirdly, persistent employees with job passion and sense of control of their life achieve extra-innovative behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]