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Influence and Complementarity of Follow-on Managerial Innovations within a Public Organization

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Abstract

The objective of this research is to explore the relations between different categories of managerial innovations in public organizations. This paper aims to characterize the nature of the links between the implementation of an innovation and the subsequent adoption of a second, “follow-on” innovation. The research, which integrates the specific dimension of public managerial innovation, endeavours to enrich the research and the literature on the determinants of innovation dynamics in public organizations. Using two case studies of French local government authorities, this research highlights the direct and indirect effects and show how managerial innovations positively influence the future innovation capability of public organizations.

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Notes

  1. Following Rogers (2003), De Lancer Julnes (2008) and Damanpour and Schneider (2008), innovation is defined as the generation and adoption by an organization of new ideas and behaviours.

  2. Also known as organizational, administrative or management innovation.

  3. Technological innovation: when a new technological competence that concerns the organization’s main business or activity is deployed.

  4. Managerial innovations with a mainly private focus induce a transformation of the administrative organization’s behaviours and values and of its modes of internal interaction (Bouckaert and Halligan 2008).

  5. The limits of these studies, from the perspective of our research problem, concern, on one hand, the domain of the field work (the private sector) and, on the other hand, their research object, which is specifically limited to the analysis of the influence of technological innovations on managerial ones.

  6. The difference in data collection between the two cases is explained by the time spent in each local authority: Case 1 corresponds to a metropolitan administration and smaller local authorities where the research was conducted in different phases with the management control department, whereas Case 2 is an EPCI with different local authorities where it was possible to do field work with continual involvement over the long term with numerous actors. These two approaches to data collection correspond to the recommendations made by De Vries et al. (2016) on the need for research conducted on site in order to gain a real understanding of the process of public innovation. Also, in relation to the research problem, the two cases are more complementary than comparative in purpose.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Toulouse Business School, Toulouse, France

    Christophe Favoreu

  2. Université d’Angers, Angers, France

    Christophe Maurel

  3. Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, IAE Pau-Bayonne, CREG, Pau, France

    David Carassus & Pierre Marin

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  1. Christophe Favoreu
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  2. Christophe Maurel
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Correspondence to Christophe Favoreu.

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Favoreu, C., Maurel, C., Carassus, D. et al. Influence and Complementarity of Follow-on Managerial Innovations within a Public Organization. Public Organiz Rev 19, 345–365 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11115-018-0411-0

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