The Gap Between the Rhetorical Why and the Practical What and How of Public Sector Innovation.

Politicians and policymakers call for public sector innovation to address societal challenges and to streamline and cut costs. This results in rationales to handle both smaller and more complex types of innovation. To explore how these rationales materialize at a workplace level, this paper aims to examine perceptions of why innovation in the public sector is needed, what innovation is, and how innovation work can be conducted. The findings demonstrate difficulties in establishing an organizational purpose for innovation and translating this understanding into practice. The result is a gap between the rhetorical why and the practical what and how of innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]