Innovation Discontinuation in Public Organizations: From the Institutional and Ecological Perspectives

Abstract

The present paper examines the discontinuation of two types of innovation adopted in public organizations by employing the integration of
institutional and ecological perspectives. The analysis of data was performed on 292 public organizations that use voluntary innovation (e-learning) and compulsory innovation (e-auction) through multiple regression models. Control variables include organizational size and innovation experience. The findings find that discontinuation of voluntary innovation can be explained by cultural compatibility, innovation legitimacy, sunk cost of innovation, and adaptation factors (knowledge management practices and collaborative networks). However, only cultural compatibility, innovation legitimacy, and knowledge management can explain the discontinuation of compulsory innovation. The inclusion of knowledge management and collaborative networks factors
in the framework reduces the environmental determinism of the ecological and institutional perspectives and highlights the importance of organizational adaptation. By introducing types of innovation to its methodology, the current
study contributes a potential solution to the problem of contradictory results from previous innovation studies. The findings of this research could help make failure of potentially highly advantageous innovations less likely, and could
help to facilitate their successful implementation.