Thailand’s 4.0 strategy intends to achieve prosperity, security, and sustainability for its citizens both today and in the distant future. By focusing on the public sector and its civil servants, the government is driving innovation in the public sector by using design thinking (DT) to train government officials to improve public sector innovation (PSI). However, despite studies being conducted on DT and its increasing popularity among scholars, there is still a gap between knowledge and practice with regard to the learning effectiveness of the DT methodology in terms of fostering public sector innovation. Therefore, the authors’ objective for this study was to explore the effectiveness of DT in the Thai PSI and measure the learning effectiveness of the design thinking method (DTM). The researchers conducted action research through a series of workshops and in-class activities involving both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The sample was made up of government officials participating in the Thai Government Innovation Lab (GIL) project in 2020 and 2021. The results on the effectiveness of the program showed that fostering government innovation through DT education led to highly sustainable and highly effective outcomes. This study contributes to the development of public innovation by implementing the DTM as a core methodology for fostering innovation in public organizations.
The focal organization for this article is the leading engineering service company in Thailand hereinafter called 'Thai CLV'. The company is well known for the good quality of its maintenance projects for oil tanks with a long period of service for the customers. Due to the rapidly changing engineering and technological landscape and the robust competition of the external environment and competitors, the management of the company believes that the utilization of team structure could deliver a flexible working environment and better outcomes for the project. Therefore, its field operations have utilized a team structure for its tank maintenance process. The focus of this article is Thai CLV's effort to further organize itself around high-performance teams by exploring the opportunities of external functions towards a high-performing entrepreneurial team.Among the 10 teams within the maintenance department, two of them always deliver good performance with high customer satisfaction. 1 Therefore, this article starts with the focus on the characteristics and nature of these two teams. These teams are assigned to manage and conduct the tank maintenance process on a contract basis. Their specification of the contract figures out the scope of the project, service specification, budget and delivery time. Due to the different locations of the customers, the company assigns a project to each team based on a geographic classification fitting well with the customer's factory. According to the nature of its task, performance of the project is generally measured through three key indicators: on-time delivery, within budget as planned and with fewer customer complaints.Each maintenance team at Thai CLV comprised 10 staffs including one lead engineer as the team leader who has two engineers and seven technicians under his supervision as depicts in Figure 1. The lead engineer is responsible for managing the project through delivery. Tasks as mentioned in the service contract are translated into the job description of each individual. An initial meeting with the key persons on the team is held so that everyone understands the customer requirements. Each engineer will be assigned Figure 1. Team Structure at the Maintenance Department Downloaded from Keerativutisest and Hanson 3to take responsibility of part of the service contract and then deploy each individual goal for his subordinates. Raw material will be then planned for the amount and the time of delivery by meeting with the team members. During this discussion, lessons learned from previous projects are discussed to avoid any repetitive errors or the recurrence of customer complaints. This leads to the precise planning of the material to be used and alignment with the planned budget. This is the preparation stage prior to the real implementation of their field operation.Moving to their field operation, the maintenance process for the oil tank includes four major steps starting from the desludging process in order to remove the thick oily sludge at the bottom of the tank, and...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.