Meeting in the middle - Qualitative study of the state of state innovation

Sammanfattning: The research question "What are factors that affect adoption of innovation in the public sector?" was selected as the aim of this thesis to gain a conceptual understanding of an innovation adoption process. A qualitative study has been performed, with 17 interviewees from the Swedish public sector. Public servants and elected officials are at the core of public sector innovation and therefore their sense-making is the spotlight of this interpretive study. Empirics were analyzed through a grounded inductive analysis through which the Integrated TOE framework was constructed upon to offer a new model. Findings illustrate both top-down directives and bottom-up support to be crucial for innovation adoption to materialize. Each direction is constituted of factors influenced by differing origins of motivation that are instrumental to the diverse aspects of change necessary for the adoption process to be complete. Through the analysis, moreover, a framework of innovation adoption process is proposed. The particular innovation studied concerns open data in which data produced in the public sector is published openly for re-use. It is a branch of open government initiatives that has begun to infiltrate policy-departments across the world and is described to have important implications for further promoting democracy and innovation. Study of innovation in the public sector in general is critically important as it improves government services, governance, and ability to address wicked challenges.