Investigating the Effect of Absorptive Capacity and Creativity on Experts’ Innovative Behavior in Ministry of Sport and Youth of Iran

The aim of this study was toinvestigate the effect of absorptive capacity and creativity on experts’ innovative behavior in Ministry of Sport and Youth of Iran. The research method was descriptive-survey and applied in terms of aims. The statistical population included all experts of Ministry of Sport and Youth (N=400) and 196 subjects were selected as the statistical sample by proportional stratified random sampling method. For data collection, three standard questionnaires of innovative behavior (Scott and Bruce, 1994), absorptive capacity (Zahra and George, 2002) and (Jansen, Van Den Bosch, and Volberda, 2005), and creativity (Randsip, 1998) were used. For data analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM) and path analysis by the LISREL8.70 software were used. The results showed a significant and positive relationship between absorptive capacity and creativity and innovative behavior. Therefore, it can be concluded that managers of sport organizations should assess and develop sharing of knowledge, creativity and providing opportunities to access external knowledge, internal communications among employees and the ability of employees to discover and exploit knowledge which triggers innovative behaviors and improves the performance of sport organizations.