Bibliometric Analysis of Public Sector Innovation

Abstract

This article systematically reviewed the academic research surrounding public sector innovation (PSI) to deliver an overview of PSI development in public administration (PA). This study analyzed 289 articles published between 1970 and 2020 using a bibliometric meta-analysis with HistCite software and a qualitative approach. This study found four primary research streams in PSI literature: (1) nature of public sector innovation; (2) strategy and innovation capacity; (3) adoption and diffusion of innovation; and (4) implementation and impact of innovation. Our analysis also revealed that the strategy and innovation capacity cluster has the fastest growth in publications. While the nature of the PSI stream is the least published research area, leadership, and organizational culture were the highest frequent antecedent and identified impacts in the empirical PSI studies. Finally, we offer 20 future research directions for these four research streams. This study may be the first to use HistCite bibliometric and qualitative analysis to make detailed information about each research stream of PSI literature in the PA discipline by measuring the number of publications over 50 years. The results of our review are limited to PSI publications in the PA field, which stemmed from the web of science database.

Research mapping of policy network: A bibliometric analysis

“…The bibliometric approach had long been used in information inquiry and reporting across diverse fields, including economics, business (Batmunkh et al, 2022; Giraldo et al, 2022), tourism, and hospitality (Knani et al, 2022; Sánchez et al, 2017; Singh & Bashar, 2023). However, in the field of management and public administration, the approach was confined to certain topics, such as patent policy (Habiburrahman et al, 2022), public sector innovation (Pradana et al, 2022), smart public governance (Vujković et al, 2022), public administration in general (Abdolhamid et al, 2023), and public administration journals (Azizatun et al, 2021; Kumar et al, 2020). The use of bibliometric analysis approches and research mapping could help identify relationships between various concepts and ideas in public policy reports and facilitated the exploration of optimal approaches to developing and implementing effective policy.…”

The Institutionalization of Public Innovation: Evidence from Indonesia

“…Although the phase of institutionalization of innovation prototypes is critical to the success of the innovation producing process, there is very little research on this issue (Bernier et al., 2015; Cinar et al., 2019; Pradana et al., 2022). Many studies have addressed producing PSI, such as Damanpour and Schneider (2006), Salge (2011), Walker (2013), and Hartley and Rashman (2018).…”

“…The research fails to distinguish between the phases of generating and institutionalizing creative ideas, despite the view that PSI studies need to investigate each stage of the innovation process individually to develop comprehensive PSI theory. Many scholars argue that each phase has different characteristics (see Buchheim et al., 2020; Cinar et al., 2019; De Vries et al., 2016; Pradana et al., 2022). Second, existing investigations do not discuss the process and output of innovation institutionalization.…”

“…In contrast, the innovation institutionalization domain concentrates on efforts to advocate for an innovation candidate to triumph over its contenders and integrate into the organization’s routine. Thus, the two are distinct in the processes and factors of phenomenon complexity, requiring examination as different foci (see Cinar et al., 2019; Pradana et al., 2022). Discussion between multiple themes (e.g., leadership, public management, innovation candidate attributes, and external environment) and institutionalizing innovation remains underexplored.…”

“…We argue that each innovation prototype is embedded differently in the regulatory aspect of organizational routines, which in turn affect the budget and implementers’ innovation scheme (see Pluye et al., 2004; Scott, 2008). Third, prior PSI studies have rarely captured the context of public administration in Southeast Asia developing countries (Bertelli et al., 2020; Cinar et al., 2019; Pradana et al., 2022), on which this research focuses.…”