Comparing Public and Private Sector Employees’ Innovative Behaviour: Understanding the role of job and organizational characteristics, job types, and subsectors

Abstract

Innovation is argued to be of key importance in the public sector. Little is known about possible sector differences in innovative behaviour. The stereotype in literature is that public employees are less innovative. We analyse whether sector is associated with innovative behaviour and the influence of job/organizational characteristics. We test this by using a three-country representative survey in Scandinavia with 8,310 respondents. We control for subsectors/industries and job functions. We do not find that public employees are less innovative. Furthermore, the study emphasizes the importance of understanding the major differences in innovative behaviour between different subsectors/industries and job types.

Key words:

• Innovation
• innovative behaviour
• comparing public and private

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are grateful for comments at CLIPS conference on ‘Innovation in the Public Sector’ held at the Ringsted (Denmark) in 2011 and the ISRPM conferences in Rome 2012. Especially, the comments from Jean Hartley improved the article substantially. Ennova A/S is acknowledged as an important supportive partner for the research project.