The purpose of this study is to analyze the factors that influence innovative capacity of public organizations. Within the world experiencing the most rapid changes of administrative environment, the relevance of administrative innovation has been con...
The purpose of this study is to analyze the factors that influence innovative capacity of public organizations. Within the world experiencing the most rapid changes of administrative environment, the relevance of administrative innovation has been continuously emphasized. Despite growing interest in administrative innovation, there has been a paucity of literature concerned with innovative capacity. In addition, previous studies have not analyzed factors affecting innovative capacity and focused only on the development of the innovative capacity index.
Therefore, this study focuses on the ‘Government 3.0’-innovation paradigm of the present Korean government-and empirically analyzes the factors influencing innovative capacity on the basis of the ‘resource-based view (RBV)’. This study extracted innovative capacity of public organizations from the evaluation of ‘Government 3.0’ action plan and considered innovative capacity as ‘competitive advantage’. Data used in this study are drawn from the reports of the National information society agency (NIA) and the ministry of strategy and finance (MOSF), and the multiple regression analysis is used.
The findings indicate that not all the resource of public organization exert positive impact on innovative capacity. The impacts varied across the different types of the resources. First of all, dependent variables including income, and organization & personnel management does not have significant effect on innovative capacity. However, other dependent variables such as number of employees, leadership, labor management, reputation, and organization’s age all showed statistical significances. Moreover, number of employees, leadership, and reputation exerted positive impacts but labor management, and organization’s age exerted negative impacts on innovative capacity
On the contrary to general explanation of the RBV, the result showed that the resources of public organization exert negative effects on innovative capacity. With this aspect, previous studies concerning ‘selective disadvantage’ provide considerable insights for the interpretation of the result. These studies insist that the insufficiency of certain resource catalyze the innovation and development, while resource abundance lead to status quo or inefficiency of using resources.
With the interpretation of the findings, the possibility should be taken into account that not all of financial resources of organization are utilized to achieve competitive advantage. So, within this aspect, the distributive structure of financial resources should be further studied. Furthermore, the relation between the level of financial resources and the independency of organizations should be noted. Public organizations with high level of financial resources may have tendency to preserve their current status and try to neglect the demand for implementing innovation.
Also, the findings show that organization & personnel management has no significant influence on innovative capacity, and labor management exerts negative effect on innovative capacity. Such consequences may be attributed to the fact that these two variables are derived from the result of ‘management evaluation’. Since the management evaluation system mainly focuses on promoting efficiency and performance through competition, the orientation of the evaluation may not correspond to innovative capacity bases on the ideas of Government 3.0 which pursue communication, collaboration, openness and sharing as a goal.
In addition, unlike the expectation that organizational trust or experiences accumulated from longevity of the organization would influence innovative capacity, organization’s age exerted negative effects on it. Path dependency may contribute to this aspect. Since, innovative capacity associates with change, and the long-surviving organizations may not passively accept the change, but cope with the decoupling strategy.
This study illustrates the influences of resources on innovative capacity of public organizations. In this regard, the findings of the study draw implications for Government 3.0 to be successfully settled and implemented as a new public administrative paradigm. As seen from the analysis, not all the resources of public organization influence innovative capacity in positive way, but rather some of the resources undermine innovative capacity of public organization. In this regard, the recognition of the resources enhancing innovative capacity should be prioritized. By paying particular attention to the relation between resources and innovative capacity, this study sheds light on the possibility of devising effective and efficient measures to enhance innovative capacity.