Understanding Typology, Management and Context of Public Sector Innovation for Sustainable Development Goals

: A Comparative Study of Thailand and Korea

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to deepen the understanding of the features of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)-oriented public sector innovations (PSIs) and the contextual conditions that shape them. Although PSI is increasingly viewed as essential for addressing complex societal challenges and enhancing public service delivery, limited research has examined how such innovations unfold within different national contexts, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. Focusing on Thailand and Korea, two contrasting yet underexplored contexts, this thesis investigates how SDGs-oriented PSIs vary in their types, obstacles, and tactics, and how this variation is shaped by the administrative, political, economic, technological, and social contexts of each country.
To achieve this purpose, the study pursues four interconnected objectives that collectively build a comprehensive understanding of how the national context elements influence SDGs-oriented PSIs. First, it aims to compare the typologies of SDGs-oriented PSIs in Thailand and Korea to identify how contextual differences influence the configuration of innovation types. Second, it intends to examine the obstacles that arise during the innovation process and the tactics adopted to overcome them. Third, it investigates the characteristics of PSIs in Thailand through a systematic literature review to identify innovation types, obstacles, tactics, outcomes, and the challenging and enabling conditions associated with the national context. Fourth, it explores how social context influences the development and prioritisation of SDGs-oriented PSIs in both countries and identifies the key social dimensions that shape innovation. Collectively, these objectives aim to generate a more integrated and comparative understanding of PSI, highlighting how national contexts shape both the opportunities and constraints for innovation practice. The study also provides comparative evidence on how public organisations innovate under differing contextual pressures and capacities, offering practical insights for designing context-sensitive innovations that better support SDGs.
Methodologically, the research adopts a pragmatic research philosophy and employs an abductive reasoning approach that alternates between deductive and inductive reasoning, allowing an iterative engagement process between literature and data. This thesis uses semi-finalist applications from the United Nations Public Service Awards (2018–2021) that directly link public sector innovations to specific SDGs. The research combines qualitative data analysis methods (content analysis and thematic analysis) to identify and classify innovation types, obstacles, tactics, outcomes and contextual conditions across cases from Thailand and Korea, enabling a systematic comparison between the two countries. To complement this analysis, a systematic literature review of PSIs in Thailand is carried out to deepen understanding of how national conditions shape innovation and to enhance the contextual interpretation of the Thailand cases. This design enables a comprehensive and context-sensitive understanding of how different dimensions of national context influence the development and management of SDGs-oriented PSIs.
The findings reveal four key insights. First, the typological comparison shows that SDGs-oriented PSIs in both countries are predominantly externally focused, with policy innovation as the most common type. Thailand’s configuration of SDGs-oriented PSIs concentrates on capacity focus, whereas Korea’s one emphasises strategy focus. Second, the analysis of obstacles and tactics identifies that the politico-administrative context and innovation type together shape the configuration of obstacles. Organisational level obstacles dominate in Thailand, whereas interaction level obstacles are more apparent in Korea. Importantly, the thesis identified a new category of tactic, forming & coordinating tactics, which addresses governance and collaboration-related obstacles. Third, the systematic review reveals that political dynamics, administrative centralisation, and reform paths influence Thailand’s PSI pattern, characterised by policy innovations and organisational obstacles, and frequent reliance on forming & coordinating tactics. The review also reveals that the most frequently reported outcome is effectiveness, although assessments of innovation outcomes remain limited in existing studies. Finally, the social context analysis conceptualises four key societal dimensions shaping SDGs-oriented PSIs:
(i) social vulnerability and inequality, (ii) demographic, cultural, and societal shifts,
(iii) environmental governance, and (iv) health problems and safety, explaining differing SDG priorities between the two countries, with Thailand focusing more on social disparity and health issues, while Korea addresses demographic and societal transformation.
This thesis provides one of the first comparative analyses of SDGs-oriented PSIs. The originality of this thesis also lies in its integration of typological, obstacle, tactic, and contextual perspectives into a single analytical framework for understanding SDGs-oriented PSIs. It provides empirical evidence on how PSIs operate under distinct national conditions and offers practical insights for policymakers and public managers to design contextually appropriate innovations that advance the SDGs agenda. The study empirically validates and extends existing frameworks, including Chen et al. (2020) on typology, Cinar et al. (2019) on obstacles, and Cinar et al. (2024b) on national context, applying them to two contrasting Asian contexts, Thailand and Korea. The findings demonstrate how administrative centralisation, political instability, and social conditions influence the configuration of innovation types, obstacles, and tactics. It also introduces a new tactic category, forming & coordinating, which extends the existing fixing and framing tactics identified in previous studies. Furthermore, the study conceptualises four key social context dimensions, showing how different social conditions drive distinct SDG priorities across developing and developed countries. Collectively, the thesis offers a contextually grounded and comparative understanding of how PSI operates under different national conditions, providing practical insights for designing, managing, and sustaining innovations for sustainable development.

Date of Award	14 Nov 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Portsmouth
Supervisor	Emre Cinar (Supervisor) & Chris Simms (Supervisor)