Can we measure public sector innovation? A literature review
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Technological innovation is critical to a country's economic development and a firm's long-term success. This article reviews the recent literature that links institutions and innovation. Specifically, we focus on five aspects of the linkage. First, we discuss the literature that explores how the culture of a society or a corporation influences the process, features, and outcomes of innovation activities. We then review papers that focus on the role of demographic characteristics in innovation. The third section of the article covers studies examining the relation between market development and firms' incentives as well as their abilities of engaging in innovative investments. Fourth, we discuss the literature on how innovation is shaped by a nation's laws and policies. Finally, we review the academic papers regarding the effects of government regulations and policies on innovation activities. Overall, this survey aims to provide a synthetic and evaluative monograph of recent academic research that links various aspects of institutions and innovation. We also provide our views on potential directions for future research in this area.
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This research is about innovation in the public sector. In a time of economic crisis and continued cost-cutting, public sector innovation is essential for governments in order to maintain service standards and find radical solutions for complex challenges. The research question of the thesis asks what are the main characteristics and driving forces of the public service innovation system and do they differ across
countries? The research has four perspectives through which the public sector innovation process is analysed: managerial, learning, technological, and systems perspective. As data on public sector innovation is quite rare, this research provides a unique combination of theoretical foundations and exploratory cross-country survey on public sector technological innovations in four European countries – the UK, Denmark, Finland and Estonia. The current research is one of the early empirical exercises
(the survey originated from 2005) to study innovation in the public sector.
The main contribution of new knowledge of this thesis is four-fold. Firstly, the purposely developed theoretical framework that gives a structured approach how to understand and manage innovation in public sector services. Secondly, the new conceptual-methodological approach of how to study and analyse the innovation process in public service organisations. Thirdly, the hand-made list of public
service innovations from four countries and the database of the survey results. Fourthly, the quantitative analysis and synthesis of the survey results which characterises the innovation process of public service organisations in the survey-countries. Especial value of the research is that it allows understanding the relative importance of different factors (in comparison to other factors) influencing
the innovation process in public sector services and shows the dynamics of the public sector innovation system. Research results contribute to the literature of public sector innovation, learning and management, and enriching academic debates around this increasingly important topic. Moreover, the research also analyses the differences of public and private sector innovation as well as innovation-related organisational learning issues, contributing both to theories of evolutionary economics and innovation. Additionally, contributions are made to economic theory, organisational theory, public administration and political science.
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This study investigates the use of technology-enabled open innovation practices in public sector agencies. It draws on theories from the corporate sector and empirical data collected from government agencies in the U.S. federal government. Based on preliminary insights from public managers responsible for the design of challenges and prizes as an innovative form of open innovation we derive an open innovation research framework. The main factors influencing the decision to adopt an open innovation approach in the public sector include organizational, project, and individual level factors.
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Existing classifications of public sector innovation have limitations because they are drawn from evidence and theory in private firms, and are informal or internally orientated. In this manuscript we present a taxonomy for defining and measuring innovation in the public sector that comprises two dimensions:
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review and critique the field of public sector accounting research. Many nation states deliver essential public services. In recent times, many of these nations have been involved in programmes of “modernisation”, which, in part, means that these public services now are significantly managed, delivered and governed by private and third sector organisations. Design/methodology/approach The paper employs a literature‐based analysis and critique of public sector accounting articles published in the selected journals from 1992 to 2006. From this, a descriptive meta‐analysis of the characteristics of the research will be discussed. Finally, a conceptual analysis of the selected literature will be used to evaluate the field and address a possible future research agenda. Findings The descriptive analysis highlights that among the research papers reviewed several interesting patterns emerged concerning public service research. Also, the dominance of Australasia and UK research was noted. The extent of research in different levels of government/jurisdiction indicated that the majority of research was organisationally based. Finally, when the various functional types of accounting are considered, management accounting remained the most researched area of interest. Research limitations/implications The paper only considered research within eight selected journals and over the period 1992 to 2006. Therefore, for instance, US mainstream public sector accounting research has not been reviewed. Originality/value The main implications of the paper are that “contextual” public service accounting research has a strong tradition and, through the process of reflection and critique of the body of work, several important insights are provided in order to highlight areas for further research and policy development.
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It has been repeatedly shown that universities and public research institutes contribute to local innovation generation and facilitation. The mechanisms behind this contribution are well discussed in the literature. However, detailed empirical examinations are missing. We analyse the impact of universities and public research on regional innovation output. Thereby we analyse separately 19 technologies and distinguish whether university education and public research are rather innovation generators or innovation facilitators. All analyses are conducted on German data.
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This groundbreaking book provides new key insights and opens up an important research agenda. The book develops a new taxonomy of the different types of innovation found in public sector services, and investigates the key features and drivers of public sector entrepreneurship. The book contains new statistical studies and a set of six international case studies in health and social services.
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This article brings together empirical academic research on public sector innovation. Via a systematic literature review, we investigate 181 articles and books on public sector innovation, published between 1990 and 2014. These studies are analysed based on the following themes: (1) the definitions of innovation, (2) innovation types, (3) goals of innovation, (4) antecedents of innovation and (5) outcomes of innovation. Based upon this analysis, we develop an empirically based framework of potentially important antecedents and effects of public sector innovation. We put forward three future research suggestions: (1) more variety in methods: moving from a qualitative dominance to using other methods, such as surveys, experiments and multi‐method approaches; (2) emphasize theory development and testing as studies are often theory‐poor; and (3) conduct more cross‐national and cross‐sectoral studies, linking for instance different governance and state traditions to the development and effects of public sector innovation.
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