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Article Excerpt
Introduction
The topic of urban government innovation is the focus of many studies in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, in which researchers identified the current government innovations of the time and attempted to highlight qualitatively and quantitatively governmental, environmental, political, and other factors that contributed to "governments manag[ing] to shake off their attachments to the past and try new programs and procedures" (Nice, 1994, p. 4). Recently, however, fewer researchers have paid significant attention to this important subject, especially at the local/urban government level. This article reviews previous studies on the topic, uses survey techniques to identify the top modern mainstream innovations and leading major U.S. cities utilizing these innovations, and statistically tests factors that contribute to the perceived adoption of current innovations by urban governments.
Whether under the auspices of movements like "total quality management" or "new public management" or simply having been implemented by governments themselves, innovative policies and technologies are often considered and chosen by governments at all levels as being ways to more efficiently and effectively provide services and conduct public business in general. Over the past century researchers in many fields have studied the implementation of innovations by public and private organizations, from farms in the U.S. Midwest region implementing new hybrid-seed corn technologies to the use of computer systems in public housing.
In the mid-twentieth century, researchers often identify innovations used by the federal, state, and local levels of government and empirically test factors that they believe encouraged such use. From the 1990s to the present, however, few have carried on this tradition of investigating innovations at all levels, nor have those who have done so with the use of multiple research methods. According to Everett Rogers in his book Diffusion of Innovations (1983), since the 1970s, the case study method has been the dominant research method of choice, State and federal government innovations have been well researched by the likes of Frances Berry, Michael Mintrom, Kenneth L. Kraemer, and others, but the current urban/local government innovations have not received as much attention as they have in previous decades.
Government innovations that are researched and recognized are often discussed piecemeal. For instance, one of the premier organizations for studying government innovation, The Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University, effectively highlights interesting and useful innovations in the public sector with their awards programs but does not offer indices or lists of the leading and/or popular innovations from around the country. Often it is up to government employees themselves to submit descriptions of innovations they have opted to use in order for their government to be recognized by these awards programs. Additionally, when one scans public administration and political science journal articles and books on innovation, the innovations covered are usually associated with the "hot" or "trendy" topics of the time period or fit into categorical boxes of interest most closely matched with the researcher. The reader is never truly aware if the innovations being studied are the ones actually making the most impact on governments (and therefore society) or just happen to be the ones in fashion or of personal interest to the researcher.
This article builds on previous urban governmental innovation literature in presenting two new sets of information. Using a review of the literature on urban government innovation as a backdrop, this article offers a detailed list of 22 mainstream innovations that includes the top three mainstream innovations in local government of the past five years. This information, along with the cities believed to be leading in the innovations' adoption, is derived from the experiences of local government association members and academics studying the subject and recorded using survey techniques. Also, given the top three innovations recognized, organizational, environmental, political, and economic variables identified from previous innovation literature were statistically tested for their ability to explain the adoption of such innovations. This identification will be useful to those in academia who hope to learn move about the innovation processes and environments of governments, to those in the public/nonprofit sectors who might use such information to more effectively award grants aimed at spurring innovation in all realms of government, and to those in the private sector who could use the information for marketing, research, and development purposes.
Everyday, thousands of cities around the United States spend billions of tax dollars to research, select, and implement new ways of carrying out public tasks and providing public services (Denhardt & Grubbs, 1999, pp. 317-8; Harvard University, 2004). It is hoped that with the research carried out and information offered, additional insight into the modern city government's operations will be learned, allowing for the improved study and management of local government innovation.
Key Concept
Throughout this article, the term governmental/organizational innovation is used and referenced. Governmental, or more generally, organizational innovation, as a concept, has been defined previously by researchers in many fields, from sociology to education, to anthropology to medicine, While such definitions do vary in scope and perspective, a clear, usable definition can be determined. Lawrence B. Mohr defines innovation as "the successful introduction into an applied situation of means or ends that are new to that situation" (Mohr, 1969, p. 112). He applies this concept to organizations by describing organizational innovation as "the ability of an organization to adopt and emphasize programs that depart from traditional behavior" (Mohr, 1969, p, 126). Jack Walker in 1969 writes about innovation in the United States at the state level, "simply as a program or policy which is new to the states adopting it, no matter how old the program may be or how many other states may have adopted it" (Walker, 1969, p. 881). Everett Rogers' book Diffusion of Innovations, defines an innovation as "an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption" (Rogers, 1983, p. 11). David Nice, in Policy Innovation in State Government, defines innovation as "change" and/or "reform" and, further, described it as "a program or policy which is new to the state adopting it, no matter how old the program may be or how many other states have adopted it" (Nice, 1994, p. 5). Building on Nice, Rosanne London in 1995 defines innovation as "a policy or program which has the quality of being new to the adopting public organization or political jurisdiction" (London, 1995, p. 19).
Given all of the above definitions, for purposes of this article, the working definition of urban governmental/organizational innovation is defined as "a policy or program which has the quality of being new to the urban governmental community in question." Innovations range from those that may depend on traditional methods and techniques to those that may employ the latest technologies. For example, a program that provides affordable housing to citizens with the sponsorship of their city government but calls for the housing to be built and sold by private developers, may be innovative in its establishment of a new type of agreement, while leveraging the resources and expertise of groups that may have existed in the community for many years. Conversely, the use of fuel-cell vehicles by governments is inextricably tied, as an innovation, to the availability and cost of certain modern technologies.
Previous Research
The finding that larger firms opt to innovate more frequently than smaller firms is presented in the 1963 research of Edwin Mansfield and later reinforced by the work of Baldridge and Burnham in 1975 and Bingham in 1978, among others. The factors of size and available financial resources of an organization having an impact on innovativeness are examined by Lawrence B. Mohr in 1969. The size of an organization, Mohr points out, is a good indicator of resources available to the organization. These additional resources would allow an organization to invest in training, give leaders the flexibility to encourage change, and better prepare the organization to overcome financial and environmental obstacles that might otherwise block the adoption of nontraditional, innovative practices (Mohr, 1969). In 1978, Richard Bingham concludes that a city's "primary attributes" have the largest impact on innovation relative to other factors. These "primary attributes," originally outlined by George W. Downs and Mohr, are basic variables like local government size, wealth, and structure (whether a city is reformed or not).
The financial relationships in the United States among federal, state, and local governments associated with grants were covered in 1987 by David Nice. Nice wrote that while wealth, size, and complexity/formalization (greater specialization of jobs) of a government might allow the organizations to take more risk (relative to smaller, poorer governments), interestingly, the amount of state and/or federal economic resources offered to the cities is also positively related to innovation at the local level.
As reported by Irene Rubin in 1992, the factor of reform (governing structure) proves to have a positive relationship with the early adoption of budget practices, like comprehensive planning, program budgeting and analysis, and performance measures. Also, when less reformed cities want to innovate due to mayoral priorities, they often do so in a more rushed way because of the leadership's time limitations due to term limits, increasing the innovation's likelihood of failure (Rubin, 1992). Rubin reinforces the work of Robert L. Lineberry and Edmund P. Fowler, who found the "reformism" of a city significant as well. They conclude that cities that are more reformed, do not have partisan elections, and have at-large elections are less affected by internal political conflicts, providing an environment where the cities can be more innovative (Lineberry & Fowler, 1967).
Hage and Aiken found that some of the more important factors affecting organizational change were formalization, number of codified jobs (negative relationship) and participation, more agencywide participation in decision making (positive relationship) (Hage & Aiken, 1967). These findings are tangentially backed by Stiglitz in 2000 and Bozeman and Kingsley in 1998.
Results of an analysis carried out on the data from two studies focusing on over 200 Illinois and San Francisco Bay Area school districts from 1967 to 1970 are presented by Baldridge and Burnham in 1975. Among other factors found to be significant, the socioeconomic diversity of an area appears to spur more school district innovation. Also, when considering the number of agencies in a local government, a positive relationship is found with the innovativeness of the school districts (Baldridge & Burnham, 1975).
Eight case studies of various states and their adoption of (what he considered to be) innovations such as teacher competency tests, property tax relief, and state ownership of freight railroads are discussed by David Nice in 1994. Among other points, Nice emphasizes the factor of political ideology as being important to government innovation. From a tangential perspective, Anthony Downs in 1967 discusses that as bureaus increase in age--both in their establishment and actual personnel they become more conservative. Downs describes about how this added conservatism "reduc[es] [an organization's] ability to innovate and the desire to expand, its functions" (Shafritz & Hyde, 1992, p. 311).
Frances Berry in 1994 empirically studies the adoption of strategic planning--an innovative practice where an organization declares a mission, defines who its clientele is and what their demands/needs are, sets immediate and long-term goals for service provision, and develops strategies to...
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