A stakeholder perspective on public sector innovation: Linking the target groups of innovations to the inclusion of stakeholder ideas
| Author | Jan Boon,Jan Wynen,Chesney Callens |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523211043704 |
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
A stakeholder perspective
on public sector
innovation: Linking the
target groups of
innovations to the inclusion
of stakeholder ideas
Jan Boon
Department of Political Science, University of Antwerp,
Antwerp, Belgium
Jan Wynen
Department of Management, University of Antwerp,
Antwerpen, Belgium
Chesney Callens
Department of Political Science, University of Antwerp,
Antwerp, Belgium
Abstract
Public sector innovation scholarship has not yet systematically explored how the target context
(or output phase) of innovations impacts the early phases of innovation processes. This study
theorizes and tests whether innovating organizations are more sensitive to ideas from particu-
lar stakeholder groups depending on the target group of said innovation. Using a large-scale
dataset from the Australian Public Service, the results show that innovations with external tar-
get groups are more likely to be built on ideas from external stakeholders (compared with
internal stakeholders) and—within the group of internal stakeholders—on ideas from man-
agers (compared with non-managerial employees). Practical and scholarly implications are dis-
cussed.
Corresponding author:
Jan Boon, Department of Political Science, University of Antwerp, Sint-Jacobstraat 2, Antwerp 2000, Belgium.
Email: jan.boon@uantwerp.be
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2023, Vol. 89(2) 330–345
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523211043704
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
Points for practitioners:
•Innovations benefit from the inclusion of internal and external stakeholder ideas, both
substantively (appropriate knowledge leads to better end products) and symbolically
(innovations need to be deemed legitimate, and receive support from the actors that
will be primarily impacted by the innovation).
•Innovating organizations need to be aware of the perceptions of the stakeholders
affected by the innovation, and properly sense, capture and translate the ideas of
those stakeholders in the innovation process.
Keywords
public sector innovation, stakeholder perspective, Australian Public Service
Introduction
Recent decades have witnessed growing pressures on public organizations to improve
their performance in increasingly complex, demanding and volatile environments
(Christensen and Laegreid, 2007; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2017). With the gap between
(high) expectations and (shrinking) resources ever widening, public organizations are
urged to get the most out of the limited resources at their disposal, and to do things dif-
ferently through innovation. Innovation, therefore, has become a central topic of schol-
arly and practitioner interest. Innovation can be a major source of improved cost
savings, quality of services and overall performance, benefits which positively affect
businesses and citizens who rely on an efficient and effective public sector (Cinar
et al., 2019; De Vries et al., 2015).
Public sector innovation has, however, long been considered an oxymoron (Bommert,
2010; Torfing et al., 2020), as the concept of innovation was introduced by the economist
Schumpeter (1942) as a mechanism to explain economic changes, and public services are
far less affected by these dynamics than market actors. Furthermore, the intrinsic bureau-
cratic nature of most public sector organizations, with rigid regulation, command-and-
control operations and resistance to change, fueled the perception that the concept of
innovation was ill suited to the public sector (Hartley et al., 2013). Several decades of
research (and review articles) into public sector innovation research have, however, pro-
vided evidence for the relevance of public sector innovation, and also led to a conver-
gence in the literature regarding the definition of innovation (centered on perceived
newness) and the conceptualization of innovation as an increasingly open and collabora-
tive process (Buchheim et al., 2020; Cinar et al., 2019; De Vries et al., 2015).
First, most public sector innovation scholarship bases its definition of innovation on
Rogers (2003), who sees it as “an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by
an individual or other unit of adoption”(Borins, 2000; De Vries et al., 2015). Two
important take-aways from this definition are that (a) innovations relate to perceived
newness and (b) context is critical. A practice that has become routine in one context
may be novel (and therefore innovative) for another (Anderson et al., 2014). Curiously
though, while the relevance of contextual perceptions forms the backbone of most
Boon et al. 331
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