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Innovation Implementation in the Public Sector: An Integration of
Institutional and Collective Dynamics
Jin Nam Choi
Seoul National University
Jae Yoon Chang
Sungshin Women’s University
The present study integrates institutional factors and employee-based collective processes as predictors
of 2 key implementation outcomes: implementation effectiveness and innovation effectiveness (Klein,
Conn, & Sorra, 2001). Specifically, the authors proposed that institutional factors shape employees’
collective implementation efficacy and innovation acceptance. The authors further hypothesized that
these employee-based collective processes mediate the effects of institutional factors on implementation
outcomes. This integrative framework was examined in the context of 47 agencies and ministries of the
Korean Government that were implementing a process innovation called E-Government. Three-wave
longitudinal data were collected from 60 external experts and 1,732 government employees. The results
reveal the importance of management support for collective implementation efficacy, which affected
employees’ collective acceptance of the innovation. As hypothesized, these collective employee dynam-
ics mediated the effects of institutional enablers on successful implementation as well as the amount of
long-term benefit that accrued to the agencies and ministries.
Keywords: innovation implementation, innovation effectiveness, institutional context, collective
implementation efficacy, public sector
Because of ever-increasing levels of competition and rapid changes
in technology, innovation is regarded as a core challenge for many
organizations (Greenhalgh, Robert, Bate, Macfarlane, & Kyriakidou,
2005). Innovation can be broadly defined as “an idea, practice, or
object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of
adoption” (Rogers, 2003, p. 12). The innovation in organizations may
progress through stages, such as awareness, adoption, implementa-
tion, and routinization (Rogers, 2003). Adoption refers to an organi-
zation’s decision to use an innovation. Implementation, an interme-
diate process between adoption and routinization, refers to “the
pooled or aggregate consistency and quality of targeted organizational
members’ use of an innovative technology or practice” (Klein et al.,
2001, p. 812). Fichman and Kemerer’s (1999) survival analysis
showed that new information technologies remain unused for the first
5 years after adoption in more than half of adopting organizations,
creating a substantial “assimilation gap,” a common phenomenon in
which the rate of implementation lags far behind the rate of adoption.
Nevertheless, “without implementation, the most brilliant and poten-
tially far-reaching innovation remains just that—potential” (Real &
Poole, 2005, p. 63).
Existing studies of innovation implementation have focused on
either employee-related processes or organizational/institutional pro-
cesses. The former type of study has typically been conducted at the
individual level and has examined employees’ affective and behav-
ioral responses to an innovation, such as psychological commitment
to the innovation, intention to use it, and actual innovation use
behavior (Choi & Price, 2005; Hartwick & Barki, 1994). In contrast,
the latter group of studies have conceptualized implementation as an
organization-level phenomenon that may be driven by institutional
structure, resources, and practices and systems of the implementation
unit (Chatterjee, Grewal, & Sambamurthy, 2002; Purvis, Sambamur-
thy, & Zmud, 2001). Without doubt, these two approaches are com-
plementary. For example, institutional factors may affect the organi-
zation’s implementation success by influencing its members’ attitudes
and behavior (Greenhalgh et al., 2005; Scott, 1995).
In the present study, by integrating these two processes, we
developed a theoretical framework to explain how collective pro-
cesses involving employees and institutional factors together in-
fluence various implementation outcomes. Specifically, drawing
on Klein et al. (2001), our model includes two implementation
outcomes for social units engaging in innovation implementation:
(a) implementation effectiveness, or the overall level of assimila-
tion of an innovation into the unit’s work processes, and (b)
innovation effectiveness, which refers to the extent to which the
unit accrues benefits from the innovation.
We empirically validated our framework using multimethod,
longitudinal data collected from 47 agencies of the Korean gov-
ernment. Given that most prior studies of innovation implementa-
tion have been conducted in the context of business organizations
in Western countries, the present research provided a unique
opportunity to investigate the phenomenon in a new and culturally
Jin Nam Choi, College of Business Administration, Seoul National
University, Seoul, South Korea; Jae Yoon Chang, Department of Psychol-
ogy, Sungshin Women’s University, Seoul, South Korea.
This work was supported by the Korea Research Foundation Grant
funded by the Korean Government (Ministry of Education and Human
Resources Development, Basic Research Promotion Fund KRF-2007-332-
B00130) and a grant from the Management Research Center of the College
of Business Administration, Seoul National University. We appreciate
insightful comments provided by Katherine Klein.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jin Nam
Choi, College of Business Administration, Seoul National University, 599
Gwanangno, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-916, South Korea. E-Mail:
jnchoi@snu.kr
Journal of Applied Psychology © 2009 American Psychological Association
2009, Vol. 94, No. 1, 245–253 0021-9010/09/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0012994
245
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