PURPOSE
Public sector organisations are compelled to cope with numerous difficulties throughout the process of public sector innovation (PSI). Within the innovation literature, these are often labelled as innovation barriers (Hadjimanolis, 2003; Torugsa and Arundel, 2016). Identifying and understanding barriers is widely acknowledged in the literature as an important success factor to manage the innovation process (Borins, 2014). Yet, the PSI literature lacks a comprehensive view of barriers within innovation process and how it has been studied. Recently, D’Este, Iammarino, & von Tunzelmann (2012) propose within the private sector that these difficulties need to be distinguished depending on whether they are “revealed barriers” or “deterring barriers”. The former only slow the innovation activities of organizations during the ongoing innovation process, whilst the latter discourage organizations from initiating innovation activities. This paper focuses on the former, which provides a new understanding of the barriers to PSI process.
CONTRIBUTION
The first contribution of this review is theoretical. Revealed barriers are explored via a process approach in that they are mapped to the process stages. Moreover, the relationship and process dynamics between them are investigated for the first time in a review.
The second contribution of this paper is to offer new insights into the classification of barriers by exploring barriers that emerge during the relationship within innovation process between institutions and communities. Public organisations contractors, subcontractors, NGO`s, public communities and even international institutions may take part in the innovation journey. For that reason, our classification focuses on “interaction-specific barriers” in details, which are experienced between these parties of innovation process. Furthermore, they are investigated according to parts of this “inter-action”.
The third contribution of this article is methodogical. PSI research is fragmented due to diverse policy sectors from health and education to water management and foreign affairs. The aim of this paper is to review the fragmented literature about barriers within public innovation that is generated and implemented while many actors are working in collective action.
METHODOLOGY
First, an electronic search was undertaken within Web of Science. Second EBSCO Business Source database was selected to search full text in particular journals. Finally, experts in the area of PSI were asked to check the draft list of articles.
PRISMA approach were employed to identify eligible studies. 3950 articles were found initially. 63 articles were eligible after following the steps of PRISMA.
FINDINGS
The barriers are categorised to four main groups. Organisational and respectively interaction specific barriers are the most frequently mentioned groups in the reviewed literature, where half of the interaction specific barriers are reported between public sector organisations. Contextual barriers and innovation characteristic specific barriers, for instance complexity and incompatibility, are mentioned less frequently in the reviewed literature.
The barriers can vary across stages of innovation process. 60% of identified barriers are assigned to implementation stage, whilst 24% belong to development and design phase. To date, idea generation and sustainment stages are not well studied. A limited number of articles study the dynamic relationship between barriers and between process stages.
