Competence and Employee Innovative Behaviour in the Nigerian Telecommunication Industry

This study primarily examined the nature of relationship that exists between Competence a type of psychological empowerment and employee innovative behaviour. The study which was carried out in the telecommunication sector, operational in south-south region of Nigeria relied on the questionnaire as the primary instrument for generating data which was followed with observations. The study measured the innovative behaviour with measures like idea generation, idea development and idea implementation. Respondents were drawn from a sample size of 310 employees from the Telecommunication firms. The data generated were descriptively and inferentially analyzed. The descriptive analysis was done using means, standard deviations and percentages while the inferential analysis used the Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient (rho) and regression analysis. From the analysis carried out, it was found that Competency had a significant weak association with idea generation and idea development but a positive significant relationship with idea implementation. Hence competence enhances employees’ ideas generation, development and implementation of innovative behaviour.