Barriers to Public Sector Innovation

Grant, Douglas (2016) Barriers to Public Sector Innovation. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

Across the world, confirmed by academic and internal research evidence, Government and public sector organisations consistently display varying degrees of difficulty in generating, developing and implementing innovative ideas. Now, as budgets become tighter, the pressure to fundamentally transform the UK’s public sector by relying upon the exploration and adoption of sustainable innovation continues to grow as a policy necessity. Given this necessity, there is a definite, identified need to critically review the literature covering theory development and innovation practice as part of a cultural challenge within the UK public sector to identify the key deep rooted and persistent barriers to public sector innovation to assist in researching potential workable solutions. To facilitate this endeavour this Doctoral study deploys, as per Chapter 3, Ethnographic methods underpinning qualitative thematic template analysis to explore and identify existing innovation barriers from qualitative data collected from the management and staff of a major UK Civil Service Department. The primary objective of this research study is to contribute to the effective improvement in public sector Innovation delivery, via identification of the key barriers via ten literature defined and participant response analysis propositions to facilitate improved innovation generation. In Chapters 2 & 4, by critically showing the linkages between innovation literature and the practical observations and innovation process experiences of public servants, workable solutions as to how the UK’s Civil Service can overcome such persistent problems have been explored. This research aims to add value to the wider debate by identifying an environment that supports and encourages the practical generation of public sector innovative ideas and change behaviour. In Chapters 5 & 6, from analysis of the quantitative data, the study identified 18 barrier subject nodes covering a number of themes which appear to inhibit the successful embedding of such innovation practices and processes.

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