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An empirical analysis of innovativeness in government: findings and implications

University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, USA

Gee Weon Chang

Korean Institute of Public Administration, Seoul, South Korea

The purpose of the study is to identify the main determinants of innovation capacity in government using a large N dataset. Three different groups — agency employees, auditing agency employees, and executive officers of non-governmental organizations — evaluated the capacity for innovation of the 46 departments in the Korean central government. The results found that leadership style, performance-based reward, information and knowledge sharing, and learning culture appear to increase innovation capacity in government. Unexpectedly, goal clarity and network relationship moderates the capacity for innovation in government significantly. These counterintuitive findings challenge the conventional wisdom of bureaucratic inertia and call for a distinctive approach for research in government innovativeness.

Points for practitioners

As innovation has become a major tool of organizational survival, government managers must learn how to build capacity for innovation. They must not only have a strong will for exploring innovative ideas, but also act as a problem solver to implement innovative tasks effectively. Offering appropriate rewards for employees' creativity, encouraging information and knowledge sharing, and building a learning culture could also increase the capacity for government innovation. However, inappropriate goal clarification and consensus-building among network participants may impede innovation. Understanding the impact of innovation capacity would help government managers design strategic actions to make the government more receptive to innovation.

Key Words: government innovativeness • innovation in Korean government • organizational change • performance

International Review of Administrative Sciences, Vol. 75, No. 2, 293-310 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0020852309104177


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