Bundling and diffusion of management control innovations in the public sector: A case study

Abstract

This paper relates to an investigation concerning a case study on diffusion of management control innovations in a specific Portuguese government agency. The research studies how the organization has dealt with management change for a period of about eight years where several innovative frameworks were implemented. Several innovations with very different origins were identified, some of them following national, international and European trends. In the organization, a process of bundling of those innovations occurred. The investigation here presented draws on institutional theory. Particularly, the investigation was supported on the institutional relational dynamics model (Dillard et al., 2004). To support the research, data were collected from interviews (34 interviews were conducted) and from extensive documentation and written material. During the change process, inside the organization, public administration management evolved into new public management (NPM) and post-NPM practices. The investigation also evidenced different categories of diffusion of frameworks in this government agency (compulsoriness, challenge, voluntarism/external image, fad and fashion and efficiency), and the importance of trends to the implementation of innovations. Finally, the way how the frameworks were diffused along the change process fits in existing theory, being explained by the Institutional Relational Dynamics Model.