Public sector innovation in the Asia‐pacific trends, challenges, and opportunities

Abstract

Public organizations face a multitude of challenges that force them to innovate existing processes, policies, programs, and products. Indeed, in recent years, innovation has become a core topic of study in public administration. However, the vast majority of the public sector innovation literature stems from the United States and Western Europe. The lack of Asia‐Pacific studies is particularly striking given that countries like Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan consistently rank high on public sector innovation. This special issue brings together state of the art empirical research on public sector innovation in the Asia‐Pacific region that examines a range of drivers and outcomes of innovation, including studies comparing Asia‐Pacific countries and countries in the East and the West. The findings show that public sector employees in the studied countries all seek opportunities to innovate, whereas cultural norms and values either constrain or enable innovative behaviour and affect the extent to which employees experience leadership support for displaying such behaviour.

Comparative Public Administration in a Globalized World: Moving Beyond Standard Assumptions Toward Increased Understanding

“…It is likely that Western centricity in public administration has created institutional bias, which limits the relevance and applicability of findings to non‐Western jurisdictions (Van der Wal and Demircioglu 2020). Indeed, this bias in our field has been criticized by several scholars in recent years (Gulrajani and Moloney 2012; Milward et al 2016).…”

“…Indeed, this bias in our field has been criticized by several scholars in recent years (Gulrajani and Moloney 2012; Milward et al 2016). Although studies from Asian countries have certainly become more prominent, their practices and approaches, and the theoretical and empirical implications resulting from those, are still not considered norm‐setting despite countries like China, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan being consistently ranked highly when it comes to innovation, service delivery, e‐governance, change readiness, and policy experimentation (KPMG 2019; Van der Wal 2017; Van der Wal and Demircioglu 2020; WEF 2017; World Bank 2018).…”

Advancing international cooperation as a strategy for managing pandemics

“…These experts advise and legitimise the government's pandemic policy and drive policy innovation (Baekkeskov, 2016). Second, although much of the research on policy innovation emphasises the substantial time necessary for innovative policy design and enactment (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2000;Van der Wal & Demircioglu, 2020), policy innovation during pandemic crises must occur quickly (Moon, 2020). When implemented as rapid responses to mitigate and suppress crises, innovative policies bear the burden of uncertainty and risk (Rogers, 2003).…”

Public Sector Innovation, E-Government, and Anticorruption in China and India: Insights from Civil Servants

“…The second issue concerns whose opinions get picked up and at whose cost. With a few exceptions (Graycar, 2014;Jackson & Smith, 1995;van der Wal, Graycar, & Kelly, 2016), the primary focus of the literature has been on citizens (CMS, 2018;Li, Gong, & Xiao, 2016;Su, 2020;Yu, Chen, & Lin, 2013) and experts' opinions (Song & Cheng, 2012;Thompson & Shah, 2005). Most of these extant inquiries have thus fallen short of fully capturing public officials' perceptions.…”