UK Partner
Emre CINAR, Dr. Senior Lecturer, Departmental Director of Postgraduate Research (DDPGR), School of Strategy, Marketing and Innovation
Ukraine Partner
Oksana Prodiusб, Professor, Head of the Department of Management
Co-Investigators
Sercan Ozcan, Dr. , (Assoc. Prof.) in Innovation & Technology Management, Associate Head of Research and Innovation, School of Strategy, Marketing and Innovation
Sokoly Ivan Ivanovich, Professor, Professor of Management, Department of Management
Project objectives
This project corresponds with Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine Research Priorities (2022-26) (Priority 1. Public policy development and its implementation in education, science, innovation and technology).Tackling inequality and poverty is a priority for developing countries and is crucial for ensuring economic and social stability. The need to solve these complex problems requires the introduction of innovation in the public sector of Ukraine. Public sector innovation (PSI) necessitates collaboration between the state, the private sector and civil society institutions as well as the transfer of good practices nationally and internationally. The project will study the landscape of successful collaborative innovation in government and public services in Ukraine and Eastern Europe & Baltic Region from a comparative perspective. The aim is to understand the content, collaborative management, process dynamics and public value outcomes of collaborative innovation adoption in public services before the war period in Ukraine and compare it with the innovations from Eastern European and Baltic regions (Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania). This research will enable researchers, policy makers, and practitioners to develop the skills and capacity to effectively manage collaborative innovation within government to solve difficult policy problems as well as to identify potential innovation transfer from Eastern Europe and Baltic regions.
Project goals
The goal of the project is to enhance theoretical and methodological foundations and develop scientific and practical recommendations to create a conceptual framework for introducing and managing innovation in public services through collaborative partnerships between the public, private, and third sectors. Previous research on public sector innovation (PSI) has emphasized the role of collective action with external partners in solving complex policy problems through governance networks and horizontal relations. Cinar et al. (2022a) studied the actors, process, and governance of collaborative PSI and how it can facilitate successful innovation transfer and outcomes in government, while also acknowledging the importance of national context. However, Cinar et al. (2021) identified numerous challenges to collaborative PSI that require coping strategies and tactics to overcome. Cinar et al. (2022b) proposed a conceptual framework to understand how national context can influence the content and management of PSI. This project will build on this work and aim to understand the landscape of collaborative PSI in Ukraine and compare it to neighbouring contexts in Eastern Europe and the Baltic regions. To do so, five research questions will be explored:
1. To what extent can collaboration with NGOs, citizens, and the private sector contribute to public sector innovation?
2. What are the barriers to collaborative public sector innovation, and how can they be overcome through coping strategies?
3. What are the key success factors for producing public value through collaborative public sector innovation?
4. How does the national context influence the content, management, and outcomes collaborative of public sector innovation?
5. To what extent innovations can be transferred nationally and internationally?
First, the literature review will examine the current state of knowledge on collaborative public sector innovation. Subsequently, the research project will study and compare innovative projects in public services that were introduced in Ukraine, East European and Baltic countries and submitted to OECD`s Observatory for Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) and UN`s Public Service Award databases. The databases include qualitative application forms and these forms will be analysed via content analysis in which the project leader has methodological expertise. A research associate will be hired, who will code the cases via NVivo software. The project team will produce research outputs (1 conference paper, 1 OECD- OPSI blog post, 1 journal publication) based on this coding.
This initial project aims to develop a long-term collaboration and further research funding to study public sector innovation in Ukraine and Eastern Europe through primary data collection.
Role of each Partner
The UK partners will provide the subject and methodological expertise to analyse the data and develop the conceptual framework and research outputs. The Ukrainian partners will attend the research meetings and reflect their contextual experience on the public management and public sector innovation in Ukraine to develop the research outputs. They will also gain subject experience on the public sector innovation and methodological experience how to utilise NVivo software for qualitative data analysis. They will be invited to other research project meetings studying PSI in different contexts such as the UK, Canada and Singapore as discussants which will be organised by the project leader.
Timing
Project Start Date: 15.02.2023
Project End Date: 31.08.2023
Expected results
1. Conference Paper: The governance of collaborative public sector innovation to produce public value: The case of Ukraine
2.Online Blog post for OECD- OPSI platform: Collaborative public sector innovation in Ukraine: Challenges and opportunities
3. Research Paper: The public value proposition and transferability of collaborative public sectorinnovation: Evidence from Ukraine and Baltic States. Target Journal: Public Management Review (ABS4)
4. Research Paper: The obstacles to collaborative public sector innovation and coping strategies: A comparative study. Target Journal: International Review of Administrative Sciences (ABS3)
5.Research Bid Proposal: Collaborative public sector innovation in local governments: A comparative study of Poland and Ukraine- British Academy
