Innovation in Public Services

Theoretical, managerial, and international perspectives

Stephen Osborne, Louise Brown, Richard Walker, Stephen P. Osborne, Louise Brown, Richard M. Walker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317362593
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

In response to changes in internal needs, external organizational environments, and the expectations of shareholders – most notably, citizens and politicians – innovation is now an important common-place aspect of governance and the running of public service organizations. Given the ongoing financial and economic crisis, which presents a significant challenge to public service organizations (PSOs), there is a growing need to establish innovative strategies in order to survive the crisis, and provide the basis for future sustainable growth.

This book contributes towards the discussion of PSO innovation through theoretically informed empirical studies of innovation across a range of theories, topics and fields. Studies examine the role of citizens, managers, and public service organizations; the adoption, diffusion, implementation, and management of innovations; collaboration, communication, and information technologies; and decision-making, ethical principles, HR management, leadership, and procurement. The studies – which examine the situation in a range of countries in Europe and Asia – cover a range of different organizations such as non-profits, health service organizations, and local governments. This book was originally published as a special issue of Public Management Review.

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL ANTECEDENTS OF PROCESS INNOVATION

A review and extension

Richard M. Walker

Richard M. Walker

Department of Public Policy,

City University of Hong Kong

Hong Kong

People’s Republic of China

Abstract

Innovation in public organizations is widely documented and has increasingly been the subject of empirical scrutiny. This article integrates the empirical evidence of the internal and external antecedents of process innovations in local governments and proposes directions for future research. The importance of the internal antecedents of organizational size, administrative capacity and organizational learning is uncovered using the meta-analytic support score method, but not in relation to external antecedents. Directions for further research are presented on the independent, joint and non-linear effects of antecedents on the adoption of innovation, and the implications of these arguments on the future study of innovation in local governments are considered from a structural contingency perspective.

INTRODUCTION

Evidence shows that public organizations regularly implement new services and service delivery methods. These innovations occur in response to changes in the external environment – deregulation, resource scarcity and customer demands – and are based on internal organizational choices, such as perceived performance gaps, pursuit of a higher level of aspiration and increasing the extent and quality of services (Aiken and Alford, 1970; Borins, 1998; Light, 1999; Osborne and Brown, 2005). The evidence base on the factors influencing the adoption and implementation of innovation is longstanding (Mohr, 1969) and has been growing in public organizations over recent years (Berry, 1994; Borins, 1998; Light, 1999; Newman et al., 2000; Wu et al., forthcoming). It is important to take stock of the antecedents of innovation, to integrate and synthesize the existing knowledge and to identify a research agenda that populates the gaps in the evidence base.

Researchers have examined the innovativeness of organizations, the patterns of diffusion and the consequences of innovation across a range of different types of public agencies (Berry, 1994; Borins, 1998; Light, 1999; Salge and Vera, 2009). The dominant line of enquiry in the social sciences literature has been driven by a technological imperative that examines the organizational and environmental conditions that lead to innovative products and services (Gallouj and Weinstein, 1997; Miles, 2005). Given this bias, this review contributes to public management and innovation literatures by focusing on process innovations. Process innovations are concerned with how services are rendered. They include the organizational and technological components of organizations, together with inter-organizational relationships. Recent changes in the management of public organizations have heightened the importance of internal organizational changes. Such changes include the New Public Management (NPM) movement of the late twentieth century, which placed emphasis on process innovation through its focus on business and managerial practices, and the more-recent changes associated with networked governance (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004; Agranoff, 2007). Furthermore, process innovations are anticipated in older organizations such as local governments.¹

This article seeks to make two contributions. The first is to examine and integrate empirical findings from studies on the internal and external antecedents that lead to the adoption and implementation of process innovations at organizational level. The second is to suggest future directions for research in this field. The organizations examined are local governments – a suitable unit of analysis because they are responsible for the delivery of many of the public services that people use on a daily basis and support many of the basic aspects of human existence. This ensures healthy environments through garbage removal, clean food and water supply, the education of children destined to become future citizens and the support of those most vulnerable in society. Focus is on the antecedents most widely examined in the studies reviewed – administrative capacity, organizational size, organizational learning, slack resources and deprivation, urbanization and wealth (e.g. Damanpour, 1987; Boyne et al., 2005; Fernández and Wise, 2010; Jun and Weare, 2010).

To meet these aims, this article commences by defining innovation and discussing innovation types, noting the importance of clear and comparable definitions to ensure that the results are comparable and, thus, generalizable. The published empirical academic evidence on the internal and external antecedents that influence adoption is subsequently reviewed. The review focuses on empirical journal articles on innovation in local governments, published and recorded in the Public Administration section of the Web of Science database. The examination of this evidence points towards the importance of organizational size and administrative capacity, but offers less-compelling evidence for other determinants. To advance the field directions for future research on the independent effects of internal characteristics, the joint effects of internal and environmental antecedents and likely non-linear relationships in the organizational environment are discussed within a structural contingency framework.

PROCESS INNOVATIONS

Innovation occurs when new ideas, objects and practices are created, developed or reinvented for the first time in an organization (Aiken and Hage, 1971; Kimberly and Evanisko, 1981; Rogers, 1995). Because public organizations may innovate to secure their legitimacy, they may not fully adopt an innovation. Thus, the implementation and use of an innovation is a critical aspect of its definition (Damanpour and Evan, 1984; Boyne et al., 2005).² Given this imperative, scholars have identified models of innovation adoption that range from sequential stages, such as initiation, adoption decision and implementation, to complex iterative process models (Zaltman et al., 1973; Van de Ven et al., 1999).

Social scientists generally concur that inconsistent results arise from variations in the definition and operationalization of concepts. Previous studies have sought to address this problem by distinguishing between innovation types to overcome problems of limited cumulative knowledge development (Aiken and Alford, 1970; Damanpour, 1991; Wolfe, 1994). Researchers have, for example, examined radical and incremental innovations as an essential aspect of understanding the adoption of innovation (Ettile et al., 1984).³ Product and process innovations are the most commonly distinguished (see Edquist et al., 2001). Product innovations can be understood as what is produced or, more appropriately in public sector settings, what service is delivered. Processes innovations pertain to how a service is rendered. It is also possible to distinguish between ancillary and inter-organizational innovations; that is, those that are developed at the organization-environment boundary (Damanpour, 1987; Armbruster et al., 2008).

Process innovations affect management and organization. They change relationships amongst organizational members and affect rules, roles, procedures and structures, communication and exchange among organizational members and between such members and the environment (Abernathy and Utterback, 1978; Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan, 2001). Given these wide-ranging effects, Edquist et al. (2001) drew attention to the organizational and technological aspects of process innovations.

Organizational process innovations occur in structure, strategy and administrative processes (Damanpour, 1987; Armbruster et al., 2008). They include improvements in an organization’s practices, the introduction of new organizational structures and the coordination of human resources (Borins, 1998; Edquist et al., 2001; Light, 1999). Within the public sector, such changes embrace methods of purchasing, delivering services and generating revenue and include themes such as contracting, externalization and the market pricing of public services reflecting the NPM (see Hansen [2010] on Danish local government and Morgan [2010] on economic development). Organizational process innovations include new approaches to personnel (motivating and rewarding organizational members), tasks and units (searching out new approaches and structure) and modifying the organization’s management processes (Daft, 1978; Kimberly and Evanisko, 1981; Light, 1999). For example, Fernández and Wise (2010) examined the personnel innovations arising from changes in employment visas, and Teodoro (2009) explored a number of innovations, including workforce succession planning.

Technological process innovations are new elements introduced into an organization’s production system or service operation to render its services to users and citizens (Knight, 1967; Abernathy and Utterback, 1978; Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan, 2001). The drivers of these innovations are, primarily, reduction in delivery time, increase in operational flexibility and decreased production costs (Boer and During, 2001), and they are typically associated with information technology (IT) in public organizations. Researchers initially examined the use of IT in public organizations (Perry and Kraemer, 1978), but have recently shifted towards e-government (Jun and Weare, 2010). Technological process innovations, therefore, modify the organization’s operating processes and systems (Schilling, 2005).

Innovations can be intra- or inter-organizational in character (Armbruster et al., 2008). Inter-organizational or ancillary innovations are differentiated from other innovations because they are ‘organisation-environment boundary innovations’ (Damanpour, 1987, 678). An ancillary innovation is distinguished by the fact that successful adoption is dependent on factors outside an organization’s control and their successful implementation is reliant on other actors in the organizational environment. Given that ancillary innovations involve a public organization working across organizational boundaries (i.e. business, users, citizens or non-profit), the growth of governance and the networked relations that have come to dominate service delivery mean that process innovations abound and are concerned with partnerships and joint efforts across sectors. Studies have examined tutorial services and adult continuing education programmes in libraries (Damanpour, 1987) and the development of external partnerships and internal coordination between departments (Walker, 2008).

ANTECEDENTS

Internal antecedents

The internal antecedents examined include organizational size, slack resources, administrative capacity and organizational learning.⁴ Arguments about the role of organizational size as a determinant of innovation are presented from two diametrically opposed perspectives, and supported by inconsistent results. First, the public choice theory holds that large public organizations are monopolistic, inefficient and driven by the interests of bureaucrats rather than users or political sponsors. They are characterized as sluggish and unable to respond to changes in the environment, and as such are not likely to innovate (see Downs 1967; Niskanen 1971). The alternative perspective on size presents it as an antecedent of innovation because larger organizations are associated with access to more-complex and diverse facilities, professional and skilled workers and higher technical potential ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Growth in the study of public service innovation
• 1. Internal and external antecedents of process innovation: A review and extension
• 2. The innovation imperative: An analysis of the ethics of the imperative to innovate in public sector service delivery
• 3. Multiple institutional logics in health care: ‘Productive Ward: Releasing Time to Care’
• 4. Strategies for introducing organizational innovation to public service organizations
• 5. Innovation-oriented culture in the public sector: Do managerial autonomy and result control lead to innovation?
• 6. From hero-innovators to distributed heroism: An in-depth analysis of the role of individuals in public sector innovation
• 7. Innovation in the public procurement process: A study of the creation of innovation-friendly public procurement
• 8. Evaluation of the impacts of innovation in the health care sector: A comparative analysis
• 9. Mandate versus championship: Vertical government intervention and diffusion of innovation in public services in authoritarian China
• 10. Determinants of innovative behaviour in Flemish nonprofit organizations: An empirical research
• 11. Exploring managerial mechanisms that influence innovative work behaviour: Comparing private and public employees
• 12. Diffusion and assimilation of government microblogging: Evidence from Chinese cities
• Index