Description
Public service innovation comprises distinct stages ranging from ‘awareness’ that monopolistic service provision is no longer tenable, through ‘cases’ wherein public sector managers enact changes to practice, to ‘barriers’ to implementation and finally to revised ‘practice’ where “..it is not enough to wait and hope for random flashes of inspiration” but instead to build innovation into mainstream organisational activity (Bason 2018, pp 5-6). Yet such innovation is not necessarily positive in its impact upon the local public sector. Innovation embodies implicit notions of progress, a modernist technological assumption of inevitable improvement, of ‘things can only get better’ as in Blair’s successful 1997 UK election campaign. This optimistic perspective in which the march of history is toward improvement is based not upon evidence but upon a modernist faith that human efforts to innovate will always lead to a better life for all. The ‘creative destruction’ of innovation may transmute into a darker ‘destructive creation’. We explore negativities of innovation including the presumption that internet access to local services is available to all when it is not, thus excluding sections of the population (eg the most elderly, the poorest and the vulnerable) from receipt of services and the false promise of more for less. Torfing (2023) argues that “…public decision-makers often see themselves as drivers of rational reforms, but quickly realize the political barriers and the inertia of highly institutionalized paths, which may be subject to incremental change until they are shattered by disruptive events” (2023, p 5). This haphazard process is how innovation works, far removed from linear processes assumed by rational models. The results may not be positive.Bason, C (2018) Leading Public Sector Innovation, 2nd edition, Policy Press
Torfing, J (2023) Rethinking Public Governance, Elgar
| Period | 25 Mar 2024 → 27 Mar 2024 |
|---|---|
| Held at | Political Studies Association, United Kingdom |
| Degree of Recognition | International |