University of Tasmania, Australia

Innovation in the public sector: drivers and strategies

Innovation is the main cause of improvements in productivity and consequently in living standards. Scholarly research on innovation began with a focus on technological invention in the manufacturing industries, but gradually turned towards service sectors. This shift was due to the recognition of the economic importance of services and the limitations of a narrow focus on technology, with many productivity-enhancing innovations due to organizational changes. Recently, innovation research has turned to look at the public sector, which accounts for between 20% and 40% of GDP in many OECD countries.

Research on public sector innovation is in an exciting early phase. In contrast to the business sector, where the OECD’s Oslo Manual provides guidelines for how to measure innovation, there is no agreed upon methodology for how to measure innovation in the public sector. One approach is to apply techniques developed for businesses to public sector organizations, while another method is to develop techniques that are specifically designed to capture the unique characteristics of public sector innovation. Nor is there agreement on the main drivers of innovation and the strategies that public sector organizations use to develop and implement innovations. Research on this topic produces contradictory results, with some studies supporting the common perception that public sector organizations are risk averse and consequently lag behind the business sector in innovation performance, while other studies show that this is not the case, with public sector organizations often leading the business sector in innovation.

The AIRC is looking for a PhD candidate that is interested in empirical research on public sector innovation. Since the field is wide open, many different PhD research topics are possible, as well as different methodological approaches, ranging from case studies to econometric analysis of survey results. One option is to develop a taxonomy of the different strategies that are used by public sector organizations to innovate, while another is to examine the drivers of innovation in this sector. Research on the latter topic would need to carefully control for the effect of policy decisions. For candidates with an interest in statistical approaches to analyzing public sector innovation, the AIRC can provide access to the results of a large-scale survey of innovation by public sector organizations.