This study was designed to determine whether or not assertiveness, locus of control, and emotional intelligence would significantly combine or separately predict the acceptance of workplace innovation among members of the armed forces in Nigeria. Four major hypotheses were formulated with sub-hypotheses to determine the contribution of each of the independent variables in the prediction of workplace innovation among the army, the navy and the air force. Survey research design was used to attack the study problem. Three hundred (300) members of the armed forces consisting of 100 each of the army, navy, and air force were selected through a stratified random sampling technique. Four validated instruments were used for the collection of data. These are: Total Locus of Control Scale (Goldberg, 1999); Assertiveness scale (Goldberg, 1999) Emotional Intelligence scale (Schutte, et al., 1998) and Acceptance of Workplace Innovation Scale. Data were analyzed using the Multiple Regression Analysis, testing for significance at .05 level. The findings revealed, among others, that:
(I) Assertiveness, locus of control and emotional intelligence significantly combine to account for 98% of the variations in the acceptance of workplace innovation among armed forces. Assertiveness alone accounted for about 49% of the variations in the acceptance of workplace innovation among members of the armed forces. Also Locus of control contributed 48.4% to the prediction of acceptance of workplace innovation among members of the armed forces. Emotional intelligence could not enter the regression model.
Mixed results were revealed for the army, navy and the air force. For the army, emotional intelligence predicted 3.2% of the variations, while for the navy, emotional intelligence significantly predicted 2.4% of the variations. However, for the air force, emotional intelligence predicted 14.4% of the variations in the acceptance of workplace innovation.
It was recommended among others that (i) Military authorities should promote the development of assertiveness and internal locus of control within the rank and file of the armed forces. This could be in the form of sponsored off-the-job or on-the-job training programmes; (ii) Evaluation of personnel for effectiveness should include indices of internal locus of control and assertiveness.