Measuring the individual innovation and resistance to change of the future aviation employees

In the air transportation sector, personal innovation by staff is critical to maintaining competitiveness and enabling technological advances. However, resistance to change, particularly among staff, can hinder progress in a highly regulated industry. Staff buy-in to change initiatives is essential to adapt to evolving safety standards, operational efficiency and customer expectations, and to ensure long-term sustainability and growth. The individual innovativeness and resistance to change characteristics of the individuals who will work in the aviation sector are of great importance for the development of the sector. The purpose of this study is to determine the individual innovativeness and change resistance characteristics of future aviation employees. In this context, a questionnaire was applied to undergraduate students studying in the aviation management department in Türkiye. In this context, 825 questionnaire returns were obtained, and the data were tested using Kruskal Wallis, Mann Whitney and PLS-SEM analyzes. As a result of the research, significant differences were found between the gender of individuals and individual innovativeness and resistance to change. However, significant differences were found between generation, innovation education, education type, foreign language level and academic class of individuals and individual innovativeness and resistance to change characteristics. In addition, according to the results of the PLS-SEM analysis, it was seen that individuals' openness to experience and opposition to differences affect their resistance to change levels. The findings of the study revealed that an increase in individuals' openness to experience has a decreasing effect on their level of resistance to change, while their opposition to diversity traits have an increasing effect on their level of resistance to change.