The Diffusion of Managerial Innovations: A Comparison of Australian Public and Private Sector Take-Up Rates of New Organizational Pracitices

Abstract

Innovative approaches to organization and management are advocated for both public and private sector organizations, yet few attempts have been made to compare the relative take-up rates of these innovations in the two sectors. In this paper we report the results of an Australian study of the use of nine new organizational practices and observe that managers in government-owned commercial enterprises and private sector organizations have a similar view of the nature of their external environment, a similar level of use of these new practices, and a similar level of formalization and centralization. We then discuss the relevance of economic/rational and neo-institutional theories to these findings.