An empirical analysis of innovativeness in government: findings and implications

The purpose of the study is to identify the main determinants of innovation capacity in government using a large N dataset. Three different groups - agency employees, auditing agency employees, and executive officers of non-governmental organizations - evaluated the capacity for innovation of the 46 departments in the Korean central government. The results found that leadership style, performance-based reward, information and knowledge sharing, and learning culture appear to increase innovation capacity in government. Unexpectedly, goal clarity and network relationship moderates the capacity for innovation in government significantly. These counterintuitive findings challenge the conventional wisdom of bureaucratic inertia and call for a distinctive approach for research in government innovativeness.