Intensity of innovation in public sector organizations: The role of push and pull factors
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
| Author | Tommy Høyvarde Clausen,Mehmet Akif Demircioglu,Gry A. Alsos |
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12617 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Intensity of innovation in public sector
organizations: The role of push and pull factors
Tommy Høyvarde Clausen
1
|Mehmet Akif Demircioglu
2
|
Gry A. Alsos
1
1
Nord University Business School, Nord
University, Bodø, Norway
2
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy,
National University of Singapore, Singapore
Correspondence
Tommy H. Clausen, Nord University Business
School, Nord University, 8049 Bodø, Bodø
8049, Norway.
Email: tommy.h.clausen@nord.no
Funding information
National University of Singapore, Grant/
Award Number: R-603-000-270-133; The
Regional Research Fund of Northern Norway,
Grant/Award Number: 257023
Abstract
The public sector is under pressure to provide new public
services with increasingly scarce resources. In response,
practitioners and academics have called for more innovation
in the public sector. Our understanding of sources of inno-
vation within public sector organizations, however, is inade-
quate. Motivated by this gap, we develop a conceptual
model of how push and pull sources enable innovation
within public sector organizations. Key to our theory is that
push and pull sources of innovation are enabled by innova-
tion capabilities. Five hypotheses are tested using cross-
country survey data from European public sector organiza-
tions. Empirical analysis offers strong support for the central
role played by innovation capability in enabling push and
pull sources of innovation within public sector organiza-
tions. This article advances knowledge of the sources of
innovation in the public sector and extends theorizing on
push and pull mechanisms by examining their relevance to
innovation in a public sector context.
1|INTRODUCTION
In many countries, the public sector is under severe pressure from various new challenges, such as ageing
populations and growing debt. Further, this sector faces increased demands for new and/or better services, more
cost-efficient solutions and alternative ways to interact with its citizens (Walker 2006; Albury 2011; de Vries et al.
2016). Many scholars agree that innovation is central to the public sector's ability to deal with these challenges
Received: 5 September 2015Revised: 13 February 2019Accepted: 24 May 2019
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12617
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2019 The Authors. Public Administration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Public Administration. 2020;98:159–176.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm 159
(Osborne and Brown 2011; Torfing and Triantafillou 2016; Demircioglu and Audretsch 2017). Innovation has the
potential to improve not only the effectiveness but also the problem-solving capacities of organizations in the public
sector (de Vries et al. 2016). Further, innovation can increase organizational performance (Damanpour et al. 2009)
and productivity (Arundel et al. 2015), and thereby the legitimacy and trust of public organizations (Verhoest et al.
2007; Lægreid et al. 2011).
Our understanding of innovation in the public sector context, however, is underdeveloped (e.g., Potts and
Kastelle 2010; Osborne and Brown 2011; Sørensen and Torfing 2011; Gonzalez et al. 2013; Torfing and Triantafillou
2016). Moreover, a recent systematic review of studies on innovation in the public sector concluded that the litera-
ture lacks a ‘clear theoretical underpinning’and does not relate to existing theories on innovation within organiza-
tions (de Vries et al. 2016, p. 161). Similarly, Demircioglu (2017, p. 87) states that studies on public sector innovation
have made very limited contributions so far. Scholars have called for studies that develop new theories on innovation
in public sector organizations and relate to extant theorizing on sources of innovation (de Vries et al. 2016). This is
consistent with Bloch and Bugge's (2013, p. 134) claim that ‘the insights derived from other strands of theory may
be relevant and help shape thinking about public sector innovation’.
This study heeds these calls by examining the role of different sources in influencing the intensity of innovation
within public sector organizations. To guide our analysis, we draw on classical theorizing in the innovation literature
on the distinction between: (1) supply-side factors related to advances in science and technology ‘pushing innova-
tion’and (2) demand-side factors ‘pulling’innovation from the focal organization. The relative importance of
technology-push vs. demand-pull has been one of the classic debates in the literature on industrial innovation, and
this debate has been fundamental to scholarly understandings of the sources of innovation for organizations in the
private sector (Di Stefano et al. 2012). However, this literature has largely overlooked public sector organizations.
Hence, it is currently unclear whether and how knowledge on technology-push and demand-pull are relevant to
understanding sources of innovation within public sector organizations.
The public sector is very different from the private sector, such as the latter's lack of markets and the need for
democratic/public accountability (Potts and Kastelle 2010; Nählinder 2013), which can influence how push and pull
factors should be conceptualized and how they influence innovation. Thus, examining push and pull within the con-
text of the public sector may advance theoretical understanding of the role of push and pull factors in generating
innovation more generally. To accomplish this, it is not sufficient to apply extant theorizing to a new context. Rather,
we should first develop a conceptual understanding of how push and pull mechanisms relate to sources of innova-
tion in the public sector context. This article conceptualizes technology-push and demand-pull within the public sec-
tor with an eye toward recent developments concerning innovation in the literature on the private sector. Moreover,
we offer theorizing on how push- and pull-related sources of innovation enter public sector organizations’innovation
processes. In so doing, we take an organization-centric perspective on how technology-push and demand-pull act as
enabling sources of innovation within public sector organizations.
Key to this study is the concept of ‘innovation capability’, which highlights the role of organizations’capabilities
in enabling both technology-push and demand-pull as sources of innovation, and thus constitutes a key source of
innovation in itself (Lichtenthaler and Lictenthaler 2009; Klein et al. 2013). Thus, this article not only seeks to bridge
the literatures on innovation in the private and public sectors but, more importantly, seeks to integrate different the-
oretical perspectives on the sources of innovation within organizations (i.e., integration of technology-push/demand-
pull with theorizing on organizational capabilities). We ask the following research question: What is the interplay
between technology-push, demand-pull, and organizational capabilities in promoting innovation within public sector
organizations? We develop five hypotheses that are empirically tested using a comprehensive dataset on innovation
in European public sector organizations.
The present study adds to existing scholarship in several ways. First, we contribute a better understanding of the
sources of innovation within public sector organizations, as has been called for in the literature (de Vries et al. 2016;
Demircioglu and Audretsch 2019). Second, we extend the classical theorizing in the innovation literature on push
160 CLAUSEN ET AL.
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