How to Encourage Organizational Innovation in Public Organizations? Exploration of the Influence of Cultural Mechanism

Culture is particularly important as a soft power of competition in public organizations. This article attempts to reveal that public organizational innovation is not dependent on the strength of a condition variable in a public organizational culture, but on the combination of different condition variables. Based on the analysis of 23 public organizations in China, this article employs qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) method to explore the mechanism of public organization culture on organizational innovation. The results are as follows: Firstly, the cultural foundation of public organizational innovation is a combination of high participation and high adaptability. Secondly, “high participation, high adaptability, and high mission” or “high participation, high adaptability, and high consistency” is a necessary condition for organizational innovation. Thirdly, the final score of organizational innovation brought by the same combination of cultural factors of public organizations may have different scores in the three dimensions of technological product innovation, technological process innovation and management innovation. Fourth, for the promotion of organizational innovation in public organizations, it is necessary to create certain conditions in combination with the resource endowment of their own organizations.

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