Leading-Edge Research in Public Sector Innovation

Structure, Dynamics, Values and Outcomes

Government and non-profit innovation has emerged as a strong cross-disciplinary research field with its own schools of study. Innovation is studied in fields and organizations that are open to trying out new policies, programs and processes. In twenty-two years of publication, The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal (TIJ) has published papers and books discussing theory, practice, public policy and administration, health, education, all levels of government and other areas of study. Truly cross-disciplinary, it has been at the forefront of studying new practices and approaches such as leadership, employee empowerment, policy informatics and collaboration. Key TIJ papers are published in this book, including those most cited in scholarly work. TIJ has been a forum for discussion of theories, frameworks and evaluations of public sector innovation; it has demonstrated how interpretive, analytic, quantitative and demographic methods can be applied to public sector innovation and has guided governments to more effective policies. TIJ has not adopted a field or school; nonetheless, schools of study are represented here, such as adoption, diffusion and the effects and fate of innovations and their organizations, as are some of the best-known scholars of public sector innovation: Everett M. Rogers, James Iain Gow, Frances Westley and Eleanor D. Glor.