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Jean-Louis Denis and Nassera Touati

Analyse critique de la littérature scientifique portant sur l’innovation dans le secteur public : bilan et perspectives de recherche prometteuses

Nassera Touati and Jean-Louis Denis
This paper critically analysis the empirical studies concerning innovation in the public sector. It focuses on three research questions related to: the adoption and diffusion of innovations, their generation and implementation. Works, based on a variance approach, have essentially studied the adoption phenomenon: their aim is to identify factors influencing the adoption of innovation. These studies’ results are often contradictory because of the complex relations between variables. Process based studies offer a better understanding of the innovation phenomenon: in particular, they show how the context and the actors’ perceptions influence innovation processes. This being said, these studies rely, for the most part, on political theoretical frameworks and consequently neglect learning issues. We argue that the development of a research agenda tackling these issues would be useful. It would be also important to pay more attention to innovation sustainability issues. Finally, studying complex innovations, which involve multiple interdependent organisations, is crucial.

Favoriser l’innovation dans l’élaboration des politiques : un nouveau rôle pour les politiciens

Eva Sørensen
Public innovation is moving to the top of the research and reform agendas in many Western countries. Innovation is increasingly viewed as an important means to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public service delivery, but the need for policy innovation has been largely overlooked despite the fact that policy innovation is a key aspect of public innovation. New strands of innovation theory and governance theory highlight the important role of collaboration for promoting public as well as private sector innovation. However, efforts to enhance the public sector’s capacity for collaborative policy innovation calls for the development of a new role for politicians, as is illustrated by two Danish case studies of collaborative policy innovation projects.

Positionnement institutionnel et innovation dans le secteur public

Luc Bernier, Taïeb Hafsi and Carl Deschamps
In the Westminster tradition of government, there are three types of organizations: the central agencies that coordinate the entire state apparatus, the departments that manage policy domains and the more autonomous agencies that have more specialized missions. The hypothesis could be made that the central agencies are closer to politics and more likely to be more conservative, trying to avoid risk and questions to the ministers. Is it possible that being further from politics allows having more space to innovate? Using data from the Canadian Management Innovation Award, we test this hypothesis. Apart of the results on public enterprises where the results are not significative, the hypothesis is confirmed. Agentification allows innovation.

L’innovation au sein des entreprises et du gouvernement : se tourner vers l’avenir

Sandford Borins
This paper discusses the impact on public sector innovation of the two most significant overarching policy developments in the last five years: economic stimulus in response to the global financial crisis, and austerity intended to reduce government deficits. The former’s focus on immediacy limited the extent stimulus funds could support public sector innovation. Austerity had a mixed effect: a positive impetus to find new service delivery mechanism, but a negative impact due to the reduction of slack used to support innovation. The paper also presents results of a study of applications to the 2010 Innovations in American Government Awards that replicates the author’s 1998 book Innovating with Integrity. The most significant difference observed is a much greater salience of interorganizational partnerships, including those involving shared funding, now than two decades ago.

Réceptivité et contraintes de l’innovation dans l’administration publique

Denis Harrisson
Public administrations are confronted with economic and political constraints as well as the need to maintain quality services. They must create innovative approaches that transform the rules and standards guiding the action and activities of stakeholders. Innovation is not simply a result – it is above all a process that brings a range of actors into play. The knowledge, creativity and participation of these actors are all central to the innovation process. Values as well as performance and productivity goals must converge, even though they are sometimes seen as being opposed. This analysis is based on two research projects conducted in the area of public administration innovation during the last ten years. It shows that the innovation process is not rigid or fixed but instead moulds itself to the changing context.

L’innovation dans les services publics : gouvernance plutôt que gestion des risques

Stephen P. Osborne and Louise Brown
This paper considers the important issue of risk in the innovation process in public services. It argues that current public policy gives little guidance to service manager son how to deal with such risk, beyond noting that ‘it is important’. Where they do exist, current approaches to risk and innovation in public services are invariably around actuarial or health and safety approaches concerned with minimising or removing risk. However we argue that risk is integral to the innovation process and that an alternative approach is needed that both recognises the necessity of risk for effective innovation and engages most broadly with service stakeholders to resolve how much risk is acceptable for identified potential public service benefits. A five stage model is proposed to implement this approach.

Veille, innovation et planification stratégique : un défi de complémentarité

Alain Rajotte
This article examines the challenges of horizon scanning (or strategic watch) in a context in which innovation constitutes a priority of government action. The current situation in Quebec’s public administration is similar to that prevailing in most of the advanced economies – in particular, a lack of support structures and genuine linkage to government priorities. Notwithstanding a number of particularities, the author argues that the measures required to achieve satisfactory, innovation-focused horizon scanning cannot be dealt with separately from the challenges of strategic planning in the era of globalization.

Une famille recomposée : l’intégration d’un centre de réadaptation dans un centre hospitalier

Stéphanie Gagnon
This article presents the case of the integration of the hospital known as Hôpital Marie Enfant into the university medical centre known as CHU Sainte-Justine in 2000. In particular, this case concerns a merger of healthcare institutions that is atypical in comparison with most such mergers in the Quebec health system. For one, it was voluntary rather than imposed. Secondly, it involved specialized clienteles at different points along the care continuum. During the integration process, emphasis was placed on the management of organizational boundaries, to which various organizational actors contributed during the period under study. The results of the present study show that five types of boundaries had to be managed over three different periods in order to fully implement integration. The process, as originally planned, had to be modified in order to manage boundaries presenting issues requiring attention.