Drivers and Barriers of Public Innovation in Crime Prevention

Abstract

ABSTRACTPublic managers experience a growing demand for innovation. According to the public innovation literature, the barriers and drivers of public innovation are path dependently shaped by institutions. Based on a case study of collaborative innovation in the Danish Crime Prevention Council, the article argues that drivers emerge in a process of reactive sequences and that barriers emerge in a process of increasing returns. Through increasing returns and reactive sequences a mix of institutional elements, rooted in the two dominant steering paradigms of New Public Management (NPM) and Governance, has significantly shaped the Councils ability to innovative.Keywords: Innovation, crime prevention, institutions, path dependencyIntroductionThe current credit crisis spurs a whole new and worldwide development in public management. When financial resources are scarce, governments need to find new ways of maintaining and improving public services. Not only must governments be more effective, they also need to work smarter. This has created a growing demand for public innovation (Torfing, forthcoming; Paarlberg and Bielefeld, 2009; Armstrong and Ford, 2000). In this article innovation is defined as:an intended, but inherently contingent, process that involves the development, adoption and spread of new, creative ideas that challenge conventional wisdom and bring about a qualitative change in the established practices within a specific context (Sorensen and Torfing, 2011).To date, project management has not been an important issue public innovation, but projects that involve several participants have become increasingly important in public innovation. Public managers need to know more about how public innovation projects emerge in a collaborative environment. In collaborative innovation projects, it is a managerial task to make the involved actors collaborate on projects to create innovation.This article will present the results of a case study of project-based collaboration aimed at creating innovation. The purpose of the article is to describe some of the drivers and barriers connected with this type of collaborative innovation.Even though the innovative process is often seen as dynamic, creative and complex, it is not impossible to manage. But it is a naive assumption that innovation is simply created by giving more freedom to the involved actors. To create innovation, the creative and dynamic element of innovation is stabilized or given direction, meaning and purpose by institutions and path-dependent behavior (see e.g. March, 1991; Hagedorn, 1996: 890; Considine, Lewis and Alexander, 2009; Edquist and Hommen 1999: 65).Institutions make innovations in the public sector different. They create a unique political context that differs from market-driven and civil society innovation (Considine, Lewis and Alexander, 2009: 27; Halvorsen et al., 2005).So not only do we have to focus on the behavior of the actors in innovative processes, must also look at the institutional setup these actors are embedded in. That is why this article investigates the following question: What are the institutional drivers and barriers for project-based innovation in public governance networks?To answer this question we must 1. Develop a theoretical framework that can be used to investigate the institutional conditions for innovation in the public sector and 2.Investigate the institutional barriers and drivers through empirical research.The first part (section two of the article) will be done through outlining a theoretical approach to drivers and barriers of innovation based on institutional theory, and relate this approach to the two public steering paradigms of NPM and Governance.The second part (section three of the article) will be done through a case study of a specific strategic process facilitated by the Danish Crime Prevention Council. The Council is chosen as a case study, because of its long tradition for inter-organizational cooperation (DCPC, 2007: 7). …