Abstract
This research explores public sector innovation in a rare international sample from Italy, Japan and Turkey. Specifically, it investigates the nature of innovation barriers and Collaborative public sector innovation, as well as the role of national context on typology of innovations. The barrier approach to innovation and the innovation typology form two key lines of research within the public sector innovation literature. Whilst this literature has emerged under the popularity of New Public Management, new paradigms such as New Public Governance promise greater change and more innovative outcomes by utilising the resources of citizens. As a result, collaborative public sector innovation has become an increasingly popular line of research within literature. However, recent survey based literature could not shed light in to the nature of collaboration and innovation barriers in depth. Specifically, relatively little empirical work has been devoted to testing this proposition on citizens and the bottom-up approaches to collaboration. Moreover, most of the empirical research on innovation typology was conducted in a limited number Western contexts. As a result, the role of context in the introduced innovation types have been overlooked. Against this background, this thesis examines public sector innovation in three distinct cross-country contexts: Italy, Japan and Turkey.The thesis is based on four papers: Following a systematic review on the nature of innovation barriers to public sector innovation process, the research empirically analysed ninety nine semi-finalist innovations from Italy, Japan and Turkey in United Nations Public Service Awards Scheme between 2009 and 2015. The first empirical analysis (Chapter Three) tested the framework of the systematic review and concluded that interaction specific barriers are the most common challenges stemming from multi-actor innovation. In addition, it sheds light on the dynamic nature of the innovation barriers and revealed preliminary contextual differences. Chapter Four examined the nature of collaborative public sector innovation through an analysis of actors, process dynamics, governance of collaboration and how collaboration can contribute to the innovative outcomes. The analysis revealed that collaboration primarily occurred within the government and collaboration with citizens occurred less commonly. Moreover, the governance of innovation was accomplished through top-down governance, rather than bottom-up arrangements. Significantly, this Chapter identified further contextual differences. Finally, Chapter Five provided a more fine- grained comparative analysis and developed a framework to conceptualise the role of national-context in the divergent innovation typology, as well as the contingencies of conceptual governance paradigms: New Public Management, New Weberian State and New
Public Governance. The findings revealed the role of political, administrative and temporal contexts emerged as in the form of reform periods. In addition to theoretical and methodological contributions, the research provides managerial and policy implications to facilitate and manage public sector innovation.
| Date of Award | 10 Nov 2020 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Chris Simms (Supervisor) & Paul Trott (Supervisor) |