Conference Agenda

Understanding whether regulations promote or hinder innovation in organizations is a recurring question. What happens to innovation when effective regulatory compliance involves actors outside organizational boundaries and national regimes remains unclear, although governments push for scaling efforts to address global challenges with local effects. This study investigates whether the Act on Corporate Due Diligence Obligations for the Prevention of Human Rights Violations in Supply Chains (LkSG) has fostered innovation in managing supply chain risks in German firms. The analysis involves a qualitative content analysis of 207 LkSG reports from companies complying with the legislation. The study examines whether the risk of human rights and environmental violations encourages innovative compliance actions among German firms. Results from mediation analysis using structural equation modeling reveal that actual violations directly incentivize innovation, while the perceived risk of violations promotes innovation only when it leads to preventive actions. The results offer insights into current European policy discussions around the appropriate scope and ambition of supply chain legislation.

Problems could be defined as the gaps between an existing situation and a desired one, which,in the case of the public actor,is the production of public value. These problems are not similar and could be distinguished on a complexity continuum ranging from tame issues to wicked problems (Hoppe,2011). In this sense, governance is the actions of public administration and its organisations devoted to managing different societal problems and successfully producing public value (Ansell,2011). This involves the formulation and implementation of policies, but also the coordination and regulation of various societal sectors to achieve collective goals. This perspective reveals the original nature of PA as design science,emphasising a systematic approach in which public actors engage lay actors in an iterative process.

However, over the past thirty years, we witnessed a decline in the capacity of public administration to effectively address public problems due to the increased scope of government actions and the escalating complexity of societal challenges (Nabatchi,2022). The solution provided mainly consisted of developing new and supposed revolutionary governance models,bearing promises of substituting the previous ineffective models(Pollitt & Bouckaert,2017). These revolutions happened through the succession of governance eras, such as New Public Management,New Public Governance,and Collaborative Governance (Torfing et al.,2012). However, these new governance models failed to deliver on their promises for several reasons, but principally for their normative and paradigmatic nature,often followed by a blind application from public actors. This application lacked emphasis on understanding the nature of public problems,framing its context,managing different expectations and meanings from societal stakeholders about means and solutions,and acknowledging a necessary mix of governance models to deal with public issues adequately. (Termeer et al.,2015).

This paper aims to reflect on the necessity of overcoming this paradigmatic blindness and elaborate on a new governance approach capable of adjusting its processes and means as needed. This orientation strongly resonates with Simon's argument, which claims the necessity of first understanding the problem to face and then iteratively and intentionally developing adequate solutions(Simon,1969).

Indeed, I argue for the necessity of public actors to adopt a problem-oriented governance perspective. This approach can be defined as a governance strategy emphasising the need for the public actor to adapt its structures,institutions, resources,and policy instruments to the specific nature of problems hindering the production of public value(Mayne et al.,2020). Unlike revolutionary approaches that aim to overhaul existing governance models,this perspective incorporates those approaches,recognising their successes and failures as fundamental components of a more layered governance toolkit. I will analyse a set of capabilities necessary for implementing a problem-oriented governance approach and the steps public actors should take to incorporate them. Specifically, I will focus on the capacity for problem diagnosis, strategic steering of the policy-making process,management of institutional clashes and political influences, and the ability to initiate a seamless evolutionary learning cycle. The main aim is to create a space for the adoption of an anti-dualist lens for the production of public value, inquiring about the specific capabilities needed by the public actor to restore its effectiveness in dealing with public problems.

Public sector innovation is widely adopted and highly expected to improve efficiency, solve tough problems, and increase citizen satisfaction. Despite the effect of public sector innovation is important, only a few studies attempt to measure and discuss the effect of public sector innovation (e.g. Torugsa and Arundel 2016; Walker, Damanpour, and Devece 2011).

The existing discussion of the factors and effects of public sector innovation might be ambiguous without considering the type of innovation. For practice, the public sector managers could base on their local conditions and expectations to choose a “right” innovation or combination of innovation types.

This study adopts the innovation types by Chen et.al (2019), which include mission, policy, management, partner, service, and citizen. Using data from the OECD cases of OECD, we explore the types of innovations across the countries and assess the multidimensionality of the results of public sector innovation. We collected 700 public sector innovation cases: 76% of cases from OECD countries, 56% of cases at the central governments, and 90% of cases were in the implementation, evaluation, and diffusion stages. The coding results reveal that 96% of those public sector innovations incorporate between two and six dimensions of innovation types (Mission, Policy, Management, Partner, Service, and Citizen), and most of those dimensions reinforce each other. This study employs a multivariate probit (MVP) model to explore the influence factors on different types of innovations and the effects of different types of innovations.

This study finds that different types of innovation draw on different network collaborations, face different barriers, require different antecedents, and produce different beneficial effects. This study helps strengthen an understanding of the influencing factors of innovation types and the effects of multidimensional public sector innovations in the cross-country context.

Orientation: Cities and communities that are sustainable, safe, resilient, and inclusive are embedded in local government service delivery systems, where the role of communities in the governance of their towns and cities is transformed into a key collaborator in this system. The global research agenda and discourse locate this transformed role of the community in the 21st century in a social innovation (SI/SIs) praxis. In the South African (SAn) context, from a global South perspective, evidence of community participation in the local government (LG/LGs) service delivery system through such a transformed role is limited. This is despite the state of service delivery in some SAn municipalities reaching a crisis point, given the deficit in its service delivery systems resulting from poor service delivery.

In the 2024 State of LG Report for the country, the National Ministry for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs indicated that 41 out of the 257 municipalities are currently under administration (The Citizen, 2025: Online). This is an increase from 2023, when 32 municipalities were reported to be dysfunctional and placed under administration in South Africa’s national Parliament (BusinessTech, 2023:Online; Biljohn and Magaiza, 2024:2; BusinessTech, 2024:Online). South Africa’s LG Association attribute four root causes to SAn LGs declining development impact (BusinessTech, 2025:Online). These root causes have a direct link to the ability of the LG service delivery system to deliver services. From the root causes it is apparent the service delivery systems of the affected municipalities are operating at a deficit. The relevance of this paper is therefore predicated on the root cause - LG delivery mechanisms, processes and systems being non-integrated and inefficient to enable service delivery - which is directly linked to the LG service delivery systems. Non-achievement of strategic priorities in municipal integrated development plans, infrastructure project delays, and the inability to reach South Africa’s 2030 United Nations sustainable development goal targets are imminent, given the affected municipalities’ poor state of service delivery. This warrants the investigation of alternative sustainable praxis such as SI’s use to address the SAn LG service delivery system deficit, which is this paper’s aim. Such a praxis locates communities as collaborators that are central to LGs service delivery system. Given limited research from a global South perspective, this paper contributes to conceptualising SIs use in the LG service delivery system, and understanding the context and conditions for such collaborations in this system.

Research methods: Using a qualitative research approach a documentary analysis and empirical research formed the basis of data collection and analysis. This included a review of cases underpinned by SIs in the LG service delivery system, and in selected affected municipalities.

Findings: The findings illustrate collectively empowering communities and developing their capacity to solve societal challenges and implement solutions are inherent to SIs use in the LG service delivery system. Citizens are central partners to LG in successfully attaining and meeting local government’s resource demands, delivering sustainable services to address societal needs and addressing national and global priorities such as the sustainable development goals.