Policy diffusion and public service motivation: an exploratory study of the Bookstart programme in Taiwan

Abstract

Studies on the adoption of innovation in public organizations usually focus on the influences of external and internal organizational factors and place less emphasis on the effects of individual civil servants. In the diffusion of the Bookstart programme in Taiwan, the attitudes of the directors of public libraries and their information sources are critical. This study applies the concept of public service motivation (PSM) and different kinds of diffusion sources to examine the decisions made by the directors of public libraries regarding the adoption of the Bookstart programme. Individual-level data on the head librarians of all of the township libraries in Taichung City were collected through survey questionnaires. The findings reveal some associations between PSM and innovation diffusion that indicate that the personal characteristics of civil servants affect the process of diffusion. The findings of this pilot project provide some helpful observations for future studies.

Keywords:

• Bookstart
• policy diffusion
• public service motivation
• innovation
• probability

Notes

^1. As this argument is directional, the significance tests of the correlations are one-tailed.

^2. Taichung County was consolidated into Taichung City in 2010.