Top-down and bottom-up champions in the Australian Public Service.

Champions can emerge from different functional areas and hierarchical levels. Innovation champions typically reside at middle management levels and push innovation from the bottom-up. Conversely, champions of innovation are generally senior managers who support innovation from the top-down. Few studies have contrasted the behaviours of innovation champions and champions of innovation in different contexts. An interesting anomaly in the current literature is that seldom are both levels of championing discussed. Importantly here the focus is also on how innovation champions and champions of innovation behave at different hierarchical levels, and how their behaviours may differ in the context of the Australian Public Service (APS). Fourteen face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with innovation champions, champions of innovation and key informants within three medium and large APS agencies Case study findings were comparable to how champions are portrayed to behave in the literature. However, when the behaviours of innovation champions and champions of innovation were contrasted, important variances emerged including the addition of what has been termed a leader of innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]