Managing innovation for sustainability in public administration: the challenges of capacity-building

Abstract

There is a continuous discussion on the role of public administration and on how its management should be structured to meet current societal expectations, such as adopting sustainability. More than a trend, sustainability seems to have become the new absolute necessity of any management strategy and organizational statement. Business enterprises seem to be one step in advance in terms of adopting sustainability, especially with the rise of the ESG criteria implemented mainly by companies. Public sector entities also seem to follow the same path but with less evident speed and visibility. Based on a semi-structured narrative literature review approach, this opinion paper addresses the complexity of public administration capacity building to adopt sustainability through innovation by emphasizing the interdependencies between leadership, orientation towards innovation, values, and organizational challenges. The authors identify barriers and opportunities in adopting sustainability by public administration and propose an empirical capacity-building model for public institutions oriented toward sustainability through innovation.

Keywords

• public administration’s strategic management
• sustainability adoption
• innovation strategies
• capacity building