Factors affecting the introduction of innovation in the Greek Public Sector: Studying the operational program "Administrative Reform 2007‐2013"

Abstract

This dissertation deals with the evaluation of public sector reforms introduced through the Operational Program Administrative Reform 2007-2013, which was co-financed by the European Social Fund. This study is of great importance, as it examines a large number of co-financed administrative reform programs (417) that have been implemented over the past decade, with the aim of promoting innovative activities in the Greek Public Sector. The data were collected from the databases of the Operational Program and contributed to the export of a number of indicators of the economic and physical activity of the program. The analysis of these data provided interesting results on the types of reform projects, their degree of innovation and their correlation with a number of economic indicators but mainly with the degree of their completion within the set schedules. Our research tries to find the trends and characteristics of the reform projects (types of innovation, the complexity of each project, the indicators of successful implementation, etc.), in order to identify the factors of failure. At the same time, econometric analysis helped us to ask combined questions aimed at exploring the relationship between the completion of a reform project in relation to factors such as the economic crisis, changes in political leadership, the characteristics of promoted innovations and other factors.

Our empirical research has shown that an econometric model can be created which, taking as an independent variable only the factor of the type of innovation of a reform project, can interpret, with a high degree of accuracy, whether the project will be completed. In this way we created a mapping of all the reform projects carried out during that period. Our analysis showed that although the Operational Program Administrative Reform 2007-2013 was designed to promote innovative reform projects, it did not succeed in advancing them within the set timeframes. The examination of the failure factors was based on an extensive questionnaire completed by 90 experienced NSRF executives who evaluated the failure factors assigned to them.

The conclusion is that the promotion of a reform project in the public sector is a multifactorial equation which includes: a) the characteristics of the reform project itself (type of innovation and project budget), b) issues of organization and management (structure and system of administration and planning of projects, quality of human resource management but also complexity of project management system and their individual processes), c) but also factors of the external environment (economic crisis and volatility of political environment). The interplay of these factors is so strong that all the individual factors must be taken into account when designing a reform program.

This dissertation aimed to offer the following deliverables to the academic community.

1. A thorough examination and classification of the literature on the subject of innovation in the public sector 2. The mapping of the factors that influence the innovation of the public sector, according to the theory. 3. The results of the empirical study in 417 reform programs of the Greek Public Sector. A study that stands out for its uniqueness in the relevant literature and which we hope will be a model. 4. An assessment of the level of innovation of the Greek Administrative Reform Program and its basic parameters based on the results of an experts’ survey. 5. An estimation of the successful implementation of a reform project by only taking into account the type of innovation it sought to introduce. 6. The investigation of the factors of failure in reform projects in Greece and the prioritization of these factors as well as the correlations between them.