دانلود رایگان مقاله شرایط نوآوری در سازمان های بخش دولتی

ABSTRACT

While a large literature has emerged on the likelihood of innovative activity for firms in the private sector, due to a scarcity of data little is known why innovative activity varies across organizations in the public sector. By utilizing a new source of data, the 2012 Australian Public Service Commission data (n = 21,093), this paper is able to overcome these data constraints and provides one of the first studies focusing on the likelihood of innovative activity in the public sector. The empirical evidence suggests that important conditions specific to the public organization influence the likelihood of innovative activity. In particular, experimentation, responding to low-performers, the existence of feedback loops, and motivation to make improvements enhance the likelihood of innovative activity. In contrast, budget constraints do not have a statistically significant effect on single innovation. Thus, the results of this study suggest that intrinsic factors such as experimentation and motivation to improve performance are crucial for achieving innovation in the public sector context.

5. Discussion and conclusion

The conditions conducive to innovation in public organizations is an important and interesting theme, yet there has been little large-scale survey research in this area of public sector innovation. This paper analyses data from a large-scale census of Australian public service employees conducted by the APSC (2012). This empirical study is one of the first studies to systematically analyze innovation at the workgroup level (including front-line employees and middle-level managers). Analyzing innovation at the workgroup level has many advantages, such as “to overcome possible biases in favour of ‘top-down’ innovations when only senior managers or agency heads are surveyed” (Torugsa and Arundel, 2016a, 409).

This study examines the effects of the five conditions for innovation suggested by Sahni et al. (2013) on the likelihood of organizational innovation. The results suggest that experimentation, responding to low performers, feedback, and motivation to make improvements are positively correlated to the likelihood of innovative activity in the public sector context. In addition, budget constraints do not have any statistical effect on public sector employees’ innovation.

Although conditions are based on the judgment of individual employees, out of the five measures, the first and fourth concepts—experimentation and motivation to make improvements—focus on the employee; the second and third concepts—responding to low performers and feedback—focus on managers. The fifth concept—budget changes—focuses on the department or government. The results suggest that the conditions of the employee (the first and the fourth conditions) have a higher effect for innovation. Managers (the second and the third conditions) still have a positive and statistically significant effect on innovation, but the effect size is small. Finally, the department or government (the fifth condition) does not have a statistical effect on innovation. Thus, focusing on employees can bring higher returns for innovation than focusing on managers and the government. It is suggested that politicians should give employees control of the innovation process (Torugsa and Arundel, 2016b), as most of the innovations were enacted by employees themselves (Borrins, 2001).