Papers by Mehmet Akif Demircioglu
International Journal of Enivronmental Research and Public Health, 2021
Governments are increasingly using cloud computing to reduce cost, increase access, improve quali... more Governments are increasingly using cloud computing to reduce cost, increase access, improve quality, and create innovations in healthcare. Existing literature is primarily based on successful examples from developed western countries, and there is a lack of similar evidence from Asia. With a population close to 4.5 billion people, Asia faces healthcare challenges that pose an immense burden on economic growth and policymaking. Cloud computing in healthcare can potentially help increase the quality of healthcare delivery and reduce the economic burden, enabling governments to address healthcare challenges effectively and within a short timeframe. Advanced Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Singapore provide successful examples of how cloud computing can be used to develop nationwide databases of electronic health records; real-time health monitoring for the elderly population; genetic database to support advanced research and cancer treatment; telemedicine; and health cities that drive the economy through medical industry, tourism, and research. This article examines these countries and identifies the drivers and barriers of cloud adoption in healthcare and makes policy recommendations to enable successful public health innovations through cloud adoption.
Australian Journal of Public Administration, 2020
Are ethical public organisations more likely to realize innovation? The public administration lit... more Are ethical public organisations more likely to realize innovation? The public administration literature is ambiguous about this relationship, with evidence being largely anecdotal and focused mainly on the ethical implications of business‐like behaviour and positive deviance, rather than how ethical behaviour and culture may contribute to innovation. In this paper we examine the effects of ethical culture and ethical leadership on reported realized innovation, using 2017 survey data from the Australia Public Service Commission (n = 80,316). Our findings show that both ethical culture at the working group‐level and agency‐level as well as ethical leadership have significant positive associations with realized innovation in working groups. The findings are robust across agency, work location, job level, tenure, education, and gender and across different samples. We conclude our paper with theoretical and practical implications of our research findings.
The Palgrave Handbook of the Public Servant, 2020
This chapter aims at clarifying the concepts of innovation and innovativeness for public servants... more This chapter aims at clarifying the concepts of innovation and innovativeness for public servants. It first explains what public sector innovation is and how it differs from private sector innovation (what question). Then, it discusses why public sector employees and public organizations need to innovate (why question). It also highlights how to support innovativeness of public servants, by addressing the innovative skills that can be improved (how question). In particular, are there any specific conditions and drivers for innovation in public service? This chapter also discusses which types of jobs and workplaces require more innovative skills for the public servant of the future (where question) and briefly explores evolving opportunities and challenges in the workforce (when question) to predict what the public servant of the future will look like.
Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 2020
Public organisations have long sought new ways to enhance organisational performance and employee... more Public organisations have long sought new ways to enhance organisational performance and employee morale, bring about organisational change, and foster innovations. While governments across the world have continually embarked upon administrative reform efforts, the efficacy and adoption of such reforms remains understudied. This study explores whether organisational and individual factors predict the adoption and use of open innovation in government. In particular, we use the case of Challenge.gov, a novel open innovation platform in the U.S. federal government that aimed to engage the creative potential of the public in solving problems, enhance citizen engagement and public participation. Data on federal agency use of the Challenge.gov platform was paired with existing data on employee attitudes and organisational attributes over a five-year period. Our results show that a range of managerial practices, including employee empowerment, and organisational characteristics predict the extent to which federal agencies use open innovation. We conclude with discussion of the implications for theory and practice.
Australian Journal of Public Administration, 2020
Public organizations face a multitude of challenges that force them to innovate existing processe... more Public organizations face a multitude of challenges that force them to innovate existing processes, policies, programs, and products. Indeed, in recent years, innovation has become a core topic of study in public administration. However, the vast majority of the public sector innovation literature stems from the United States and Western Europe. The lack of Asia-Pacific studies is particularly striking given that countries like Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan consistently rank high on public sector innovation. This special issue brings together state of the art empirical research on public sector innovation in the Asia-Pacific region that examines a range of drivers and outcomes of innovation, including studies comparing Asia-Pacific countries and countries in the East and the West. The findings show that public sector employees in the studied countries all seek opportunities to innovate , whereas cultural norms and values either constrain or enable innovative behaviour and affect the extent to which employees experience leadership support for displaying such behaviour.
If somebody asked me to define David Audretsch in a few words, I would define him as the followin... more If somebody asked me to define David Audretsch in a few words, I would define him as the following: a great mind, an outstanding researcher, and a humble individual. Few people possess these three characteristics at the same time. His characteristics have entirely shaped my career, and David became my academic role model. The first time I met Prof. Audretsch was when I was offered a position as his research assistant for a project on the economic performance of cities in the spring of 2010. Although I used to hear his name mentioned as the most productive scholar at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) at Indiana University-Bloomington, I had not found a chance to meet him. Two other research assistants and I worked hard to finish the project; we spent close to 3 months preparing a report while receiving regular feedback from Prof. Audretsch. After we submitted the project to him, he worked on it for only a few days, and we realized that he had completely updated what we wrote. I was really impressed by what he accomplished in a few days, as his version was a much better and more highly-developed paper compared to the version that three research assistants prepared over 3 months. However, he appreciated our efforts and told us that our product was very good. The next time I interacted with Prof. Audretsch is when I went for an overseas study at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin (Germany) in May 2010, which was organized by SPEA. When I saw the course advertisement, I found that Prof. Audretsch was leading the program, and I did not want to miss this opportunity. I wanted to learn useful information from him, hear his stories (since he is a great storyteller with outstanding experiences of the Cold War in Berlin), visit high quality German institutions with him and other classmates, motivate myself to work harder (as he is also a great motivator), and start writing my papers on organizational change and innovation in public organizations.
Public Management Review, 2019
Despite increasing research on public sector innovation in recent years, the organizational and d... more Despite increasing research on public sector innovation in recent years, the organizational and demographic contextual variables that affect innovation implementation are not well known. Utilizing two datasets (2012 and 2017) from the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC), this study tests how organizational and demographic contextual variables affect innovation in public organizations. The results reveal that both organizational and demographic contextual variables are associated with the implementation of innovation in public organizations. In particular, employees working in larger organizations and policy agencies tends to be less innovative whereas men, more educated employees, more experienced employees, and organizational managers are more innovative.
Small Business Economics, 2020
Despite increasing research on entrepreneur-ship in the private sector, little is known about ent... more Despite increasing research on entrepreneur-ship in the private sector, little is known about entrepre-neurship in public organizations in general and the effects of leadership behavior on entrepreneurship in the public sector in particular. Utilizing new data from the Australian Public Service Commission (2017), this study analyzes how three leadership behaviors-task-oriented, relations-oriented, and change-oriented leadership-affect public sector employees' entrepre-neurship behavior. The results of this study show that while all three types of leadership behavior are positively associated with public sector entrepreneurship, the effect is larger for relations-oriented leadership, followed by change-oriented leadership. A practical implication of this study is that relations-oriented leadership behavior is crucial to entrepreneurship in public organizations , suggesting the importance of developing relationships with subordinates.
Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 2019
Many studies of public sector innovation concern the organisational and individual levels, examin... more Many studies of public sector innovation concern the organisational and individual levels, examining why certain public organisations, leaders and staff are more innovative than others. Wider questions remain as to why some governments are particularly innovative, and how innovation can persist in governments. To answer these questions, Australian experience is addressed in terms of why, and the extent to which, the Australian government is innovative. An analysis of government and government-related documents, as well as scholarly literature on public management reform and innovation attempts, indicates that the crucial factors affecting innovation have been the perception of innovation as a necessity, the duration and intensity of innovation, the span and scope of innovation, the extent of grassroots involvement in generating innovation, and the various isomorphic effects related to innovation. The nature and significance of each of these factors are discussed, along with insights on innovativeness in government and the value of further relevant research and analysis.
Industrial and Corporate Change, 2019
Only a handful of studies on innovation empirically analyze the links between firm innovation and... more Only a handful of studies on innovation empirically analyze the links between firm innovation and the sources of that innovative activity of sources of innovation on types of innovation. To fill this gap in the literature, this study provides one of the first tests to identify how important sources of new information (suppliers, customers, other business people in the industry, workers, and university) are associated with types of innovations (product, process, and marketing). Data come from the 2014 National Survey of Business Competitiveness sponsored by the Economic Research Service at the United States Department of Agriculture (n ¼ 10,952). The results show that innovation ideas emanating from customers, workers, and universities are positively associated with all types of innovations, suggesting that these sources are critical for developing different types of innovation. In particular, universities as a source of innovation activity are especially important. In contrast, other sources, such as suppliers and people in industry do not seem to be as important as a source of innovation.
Public Administration, 2019
The public sector is under pressure to provide new public services with increasingly scarce resou... more The public sector is under pressure to provide new public services with increasingly scarce resources. In response, practitioners and academics have called for more innovation in the public sector. Our understanding of sources of innovation within public sector organizations, however, is inadequate. Motivated by this gap, we develop a conceptual model of how push and pull sources enable innovation within public sector organizations. Key to our theory is that push and pull sources of innovation are enabled by innovation capabilities. Five hypotheses are tested using crosscountry survey data from European public sector organizations. Empirical analysis offers strong support for the central role played by innovation capability in enabling push and pull sources of innovation within public sector organizations. This article advances knowledge of the sources of innovation in the public sector and extends theorizing on push and pull mechanisms by examining their relevance to innovation in a public sector context.
QoG Working Paper Series, 2019
Government impartiality is considered a core feature of government quality that leads to favorabl... more Government impartiality is considered a core feature of government quality that leads to favorable macro-level outcomes. We still have limited knowledge, however, of how impartiality affects citizens’ perceptions of public service quality. Understanding this relationship is important because citizens are the main beneficiaries of public services and are directly affected by administrative impartiality. Using the European Quality of Government Index (EQI) data for 56,925 citizens in 174 European regions, results of multilevel analysis show that impartiality positively influences perceived public service quality. However, we also find that such positive impacts of impartiality are contingent on the socio-economic backgrounds of citizens. Impartiality does not lead to positive evaluations of public services among citizens with low educational background. The findings are robust across regions even after controlling for lagged service quality level and individual and regional factors. Results suggest the importance of impartiality, but all citizens do not benefit equally from impartiality.
Government Information Quarterly, 2018
Although increasing numbers of employees working in public organizations are using social media f... more Although increasing numbers of employees working in public organizations are using social media for work purposes and numerous studies exist on how social media affect organizational outcomes, we have very limited knowledge of how using social media for work purposes affects employees' work motivation. This paper fills this important gap by using self-determination theory (SDT) to analyze how the use of social media for work purposes is associated with government employees' need satisfaction and intrinsic work motivation. According to regression results, employees' use of social media is positively related to employees' need satisfaction (autonomy, relatedness, and competence) and, accordingly, intrinsic work motivation. However, further analysis shows that too much use of social media has an averse effect. Theoretically, this study is one of the pioneer attempts to integrate e-governance with SDT. Practically, we encourage managers to use caution in promoting the use of social media for work purposes. Using social media two to three days a week may be the ideal range.
Open Access
Public Performance & Management Review, 2018
This study examines an association between two important and historical administrative characteri... more This study examines an association between two important and historical administrative characteristics of civil service systems (i.e. professional and impartial public administration) and national-level innovation outputs. Scholars have examined the influence of macro-level factors such as the general level of human capital, culture, and social capital on national rates of innovative activity. However, we still have a limited understanding of the relationship between the administrative characteristics of government and national levels of innovative activity in a cross-national setting. This paper hypothesizes that countries with highly professional and impartial public administration tend to have higher national-level innovation outputs (i.e. knowledge and technology, and creative outputs). Utilizing cross-national data from the Quality of Government Institute Expert Survey and Global Innovation Index from over 100 economies, findings show that national levels of innovation outputs are significantly higher in countries that have higher levels of professional and impartial public administration. The results suggest the importance of professional and impartial administration for national-level innovative activity.
Employee turnover is an important concern for many public organizations, and research is increasi... more Employee turnover is an important concern for many public organizations, and research is increasingly seeking to understand the factors associated with this phenomenon. This article analyzes the effect of innovation climate on turnover intention (TI); it theorizes that an innovation climate encourages employee participation and creativity, thereby making jobs more interesting and reducing TI. Using data from the Australian Public Service (APS), an organization concerned with innovation and reducing TI, this study finds that innovation climate reduces three types of TIs to another agency, to the private sector, and to retire. This result is robust across a broad range of occupations and types of employees (frontline, senior, and management), and we have controlled for measures that are frequently studied, such as job satisfaction and salary satisfaction. This article suggests that policy makers should remove barriers to innovation and encourage activities and supervisory practices that make jobs more interesting—and, thus, the innovation climate stronger—as these actions may reduce employee turnover.
Despite the growing interest in understanding innovative activities, an important limitation of t... more Despite the growing interest in understanding innovative activities, an important limitation of the current literature on innovation—both public and private—is an assumption that innovative activity is a homogeneous phenomenon. However, most innovative activities are heterogeneous in nature. One way of characterizing innovation heterogeneity is the complexity of innovations. Using data from public organizations, this paper is one of the irst studies to develop a framework for and provide an empirical test of the main inluences on innovation complexity within the public sector context. The empirical evidence suggests that employees' innovative behavior and cooperation, along with collaborating with important external sources and the ability to work in a complex environment, are positively associated with complex innovations in the public sector, suggesting that the inluences on complex innovations span the individual, work group, and external environment levels. However, an organization's leadership quality and innovation climate do not have any statistical efect on complex innovations.
Public Performance & Management Review
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A growing literature in public management has identified the k... more Free access: http://rdcu.be/xHAc
A growing literature in public management has identified the key role that innovation can play in enhancing agency efficiency, effectiveness, performance and legitimacy. However, considerably less is known about the actual sources of knowledge generating innovative activity in the public sector. This paper fills this crucial gap in the literature by explicitly analyzing the link between a key source of knowledge and ideas, universities, and the innovative activities of public organizations. By utilizing a new source of data, this paper is able to show that not only do universities play a key role in generating innovative activity in public organizations, but the nature of innovations and their impact on public sector performance are related to the role played by universities. The findings suggest that universities play a key role in generating innovative activity in public organizations as doing so can increase the quality of public services, employee job satisfaction, and interagency collaboration.
While governments have adopted employee empowerment practices around the world, they are also con... more While governments have adopted employee empowerment practices around the world, they are also concerned with and wish to reduce barriers to innovation in the public sector. Using the 2012 Australian Public Service Commission (APSC)’s “the State of the Service data,” this article examines the association between four empowerment practices and perceived barriers to innovation. The results reveal that a unit increase in granting power to employees has a very large effect on reducing perceived barriers to innovation, suggesting for policy makers that granting power to employees is a crucial practice which can reduce perceived barriers to innovation. Additionally, while providing information is positively associated with perceived barriers to innovation, offering rewards and providing access to knowledge and skills are negatively associated with perceived barriers to innovation. This article discusses the implications of these results.
A B S T R A C T While a large literature has emerged on the likelihood of innovative activity for... more A B S T R A C T While a large literature has emerged on the likelihood of innovative activity for firms in the private sector, due to a scarcity of data little is known why innovative activity varies across organizations in the public sector. By utilizing a new source of data, the 2012 Australian Public Service Commission data (n = 21,093), this paper is able to overcome these data constraints and provides one of the first studies focusing on the likelihood of innovative activity in the public sector. The empirical evidence suggests that important conditions specific to the public organization influence the likelihood of innovative activity. In particular, experimentation, responding to low-performers, the existence of feedback loops, and motivation to make improvements enhance the likelihood of innovative activity. In contrast, budget constraints do not have a statistically significant effect on single innovation. Thus, the results of this study suggest that intrinsic factors such as experimentation and motivation to improve performance are crucial for achieving innovation in the public sector context.
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Papers by Mehmet Akif Demircioglu
Open Access
A growing literature in public management has identified the key role that innovation can play in enhancing agency efficiency, effectiveness, performance and legitimacy. However, considerably less is known about the actual sources of knowledge generating innovative activity in the public sector. This paper fills this crucial gap in the literature by explicitly analyzing the link between a key source of knowledge and ideas, universities, and the innovative activities of public organizations. By utilizing a new source of data, this paper is able to show that not only do universities play a key role in generating innovative activity in public organizations, but the nature of innovations and their impact on public sector performance are related to the role played by universities. The findings suggest that universities play a key role in generating innovative activity in public organizations as doing so can increase the quality of public services, employee job satisfaction, and interagency collaboration.
Open Access
A growing literature in public management has identified the key role that innovation can play in enhancing agency efficiency, effectiveness, performance and legitimacy. However, considerably less is known about the actual sources of knowledge generating innovative activity in the public sector. This paper fills this crucial gap in the literature by explicitly analyzing the link between a key source of knowledge and ideas, universities, and the innovative activities of public organizations. By utilizing a new source of data, this paper is able to show that not only do universities play a key role in generating innovative activity in public organizations, but the nature of innovations and their impact on public sector performance are related to the role played by universities. The findings suggest that universities play a key role in generating innovative activity in public organizations as doing so can increase the quality of public services, employee job satisfaction, and interagency collaboration.