Public Sector Innovation Theory Revisited 1

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this paper is to inquire into the state of public sector innovation (PSI) theory. Four authors, Rogers, Borins, Behn, and Glor and recent comparative governmental practices are chosen to represent a variety of approaches. This sample allows identification of both areas of consensus and of controversy in the field. Important disagreements remain about the defining parameters of PSI study and about the basic questions PSI studies should address.Keywords: public service innovation, theory, concepts, problems.IntroductionInnovation is a prime subject in our time. In business and government, it is held to be essential in the face of the massive and complex problems and the rapid pace of change in contemporary society. Innovation is thought to be the way to harness the creative potential of the human race in order to survive, to progress, and to prosper. letter in the Montreal newspaper Le Devoir (26 April 2013) noted that the Latin and Greek words for stupidity referred to immobility, lethargy or inertia, so we might infer that the opposite of stupidity would be mobility, energy, adaptation.Public sector innovation (PSI) is a subset of all innovation. Google search in July 2013, found references to 316 million publications, of which PSI constituted 4,4 million, or about 1.4 per cent of the whole, a small part, but a big absolute number. In the final edition of his masterwork on the diffusion of innovations, Rogers (2003: 45-46) identified nine disciplinary fields producing the greatest number of studies, of which marketing and management accounted for 16 per cent. This group did not appear to cover the public sector, but some of the others include subjects like city managers, public health and education. Publications on PSI thus appears rather marginal to the field of innovation studies.Having written a book on the diffusion of administrative innovations among Canadian governments twenty years ago (Gow, 1994), I was curious to learn how the field had evolved since then. I wanted to see how the subject itself had changed, what are the main theoretical approaches and what the outstanding unresolved issues. What follows is not a primer on all the contemporary theories of PSI. Instead, I have chosen five theorists and approaches in order to see what unites and what divides them. In part one, these authors and schools are presented briefly. In the second part, the contentious issues are examined with a view to exploring their potential for asking good questions.What to expect of a theoryThe very first step in considering this subject is to enquire what we mean by theory. The root meaning is not controversial: the Shorter Oxford Dictionary gives, among others, one that fits our case, A scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation of a group of facts or phenomena. The operative word is explanation; the familiar expression descriptive is an oxymoron.Theories use concepts to organize raw material into variables, abstract categories concerning causal variables (independent) and outcome variables (dependent). The common distinction is between deductive and inductive theories. In deductive theory, the hypotheses to be tested are drawn from postulates and principles that are held to be true while inductive theory builds up hypotheses from observation and adjusts them as experience dictates. Most social science is inductive, but there are important theoretical schools that are deductive. Both Marxism and Public Choice theories start from first principles and deduce their hypotheses. The theory of the class struggle, for example, made it very difficult for the leaders of the Communist countries to accept that working class protests against their governments could be genuine.Glor (2008: 3) recalls the advantages of inductive theory, since it is constantly adjusting itself to take account of new evidence. She also makes a distinction between substantive and formal theory. …

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