Conditions for Workplace Innovation in a Public Organisation

A Domino Effect of Emerging Barriers

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that innovation processes in public sector organisations are difficult due to various innovation barriers inherent to the public sector, but few studies have empirically explored the barriers in a way that is close to organisational practices and conditions for successful innovation remain unclear. Therefore, the purpose of the paper is to explore and discuss conditions for workplace innovation in public sector organisations, with particular focus on the conditions that enable and constrain an innovation process in such organisations. The paper builds on a qualitative case study of an innovation process in a Swedish municipality. The process was studied from development and testing of a new approach to the provision of health and care (H&C) until the early stages of adoption of the new approach throughout municipal H&C operations. The findings show that the conditions that enabled the innovation process primarily related to the initial stages of the process, when developing and testing the new approach to H&C, while barriers that emerged as particularly strong in the implementation phase slowed down and hampered the innovation process. There were two types of barriers that constrained learning, those stable over time and those that emerged during the innovation process, and the barriers were formed in a complex pattern of domino-effects raising through overhead municipal departments and administration systems.