INNOVATION IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND FUTURE RESEARCH AGENDA
| Author | HANNA DE VRIES,VICTOR BEKKERS,LARS TUMMERS |
| Published date | 01 March 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12209 |
| Date | 01 March 2016 |
doi : 10. 1111/p adm .12209
INNOVATION IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: A SYSTEMATIC
REVIEW AND FUTURE RESEARCH AGENDA
HANNA DE VRIES, VICTOR BEKKERS AND LARS TUMMERS
This article brings together empirical academic research on public sector innovation. Via a system-
atic 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 de-
nitions 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 frame-
work 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 dom-
inance 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 tradi-
tions to the development and effects of public sector innovation.
INTRODUCTION
Scholars and practitioners have become increasingly interested in innovation in the public
sector (Osborne and Brown 2011; Walker 2014). Many embrace the idea that innovation
can contribute to improving the quality of public services as well as to enhancing the
problem-solving capacity of governmental organizations in dealing with societal chal-
lenges (Damanpour and Schneider 2009). Frequently, public sector innovation is linked
to reform movements such as New Public Management (NPM) (Pollitt and Bouckaert
2011), electronic government (Bekkers and Homburg 2005), the change from government
to governance (Rhodes 1996) and, most recently, to the discussions on the retreating role
of government in a ‘Big Society’ (Lowndes and Pratchett 2012).
In the private sector, innovation is an established eld of study that tries to explain why
and how innovation takes place (Fagerberg et al. 2005). General literature reviews and sys-
tematic reviews have been carried out to assess the state-of-the-art in this eld as well as to
generate new avenues for theory-building and research (Perks and Roberts 2013). There
are even some meta-analyses, such as that of Damanpour (1991), that pull together the
results of empirical research on the relationships between organizationalvariables such as
slack resources and innovation.
However, what is known about innovation in the public sector? What topics have been
addressed in the innovation studies to date, and what are the possible avenues for future
research? Moreover, what can be added to the current methodological state-of-the-art
when it comes to public innovation research?
The rst contribution of this article is methodological in that we have elected to conduct
a systematic review (Moher et al. 2009). These differ from traditional literature reviews in
that they are replicable and transparent, involving several explicit steps such as using a
standardized way to identify all the likely relevant publications. In public administration,
such systematic reviews have become increasingly popular (e.g. Tummers et al. 2015).
Hanna de Vries and Victor Bekkers are at Department of Public Administration and Sociology, Erasmus University
Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Lars Tummers is at the Department of Public Administration and Sociology, Erasmus
University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and Arizona State University,USA.
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 1, 2016 (146–166)
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
INNOVATION IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR 147
Nevertheless, a comprehensive systematic overview of public sector innovation is still
lacking.
Second, most of the literature reviews on public innovation that have been conducted
in recent years aim to conceptually,rather than empirically (for example, based on explicit
data such as in case studies and surveys), grasp the meaning and importance of public sec-
tor innovation (examples are Osborne and Brown 2011;Sørensen and Torng 2011). Others
address this challenge through a normative approach (for instance, Bason 2010). This can
be seen as a substantial shortcoming as systematic overviews of empirical evidence are
essential to summarize the existing, evidence-based body of knowledge and to establish
a future research agenda (e.g. Greenhalgh et al. 2004). As such, our investigation is able to
identify areas where substantial progress has been made, and point to areas where future
studies could best be directed.
A third related contribution concerns the antecedents in the innovation process. Given
the predominance of conceptual or normative overviews, the question can be raised as to
how much we currently know about the underlying process of public sector innovation as
mapped in the innovation studies. Do we really know the impeding and the stimulating
antecedents?
In addressing this topic, we embed our research questions in the open innovation
debate that stresses the content, course and outcome of the innovation process as the
result of complex interactions between intra-organizational antecedents, resources and
actors and external, environmental antecedents, resources and actors. This interaction
presupposes quite open boundaries between an organization and the environmental
context in which it operates, and can be understood in terms of drivers and barriers
(Chesbrough 2003). Recently, such approaches can also be seen in research into public
sector innovation (Osborne and Brown 2013, p. 7).
As a result of these porous boundaries, antecedents that need to be further explored in
public innovation research include both the environmental and the organizational con-
texts in which innovations take place, their nature, and also the enabling antecedents and
their underlying contingencies. Moreover, there is a need to look deeper into the goals
and effects of the innovation process since, while innovation and improvement have often
been assumed to be synonymous, this is by no means always the case (Osborne and Brown
2013, p. 4; see also Hartley 2005).
In response to these questions, this article provides a comprehensive overview of how
public innovation has been studied by addressing (1) the denitions of innovation, (2)
innovation types, (3) the goals of innovation, (4) antecedents in the innovation process
and (5) outcomes. This research design is aligned with other systematic reviews in the
social science eld such as that of Greenhalgh et al. (2004).
Based on this, our overall guiding research questions can be phrased as follows:
1. What denitions of public sector innovation are being used?
2. What public sector innovation types can be distinguished?
3. What are the goals of public sector innovation?
4. Which antecedents inuence the public sector innovation process?
5. What are the outcomes of the public sector innovation process?
This brings us to the outline of this article. The next section describes the methodol-
ogy used to conduct the review. When reporting, we will follow the ‘Preferred Reporting
Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses’ (PRISMA) approach (Moher et al. 2009;
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 1, 2016 (146–166)
© 2015 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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