Public Sector Entrepreneurship: Its Preconditions, Manifestation and Effects in Enhancing the Linkage between Policy Aspirations and Societal Needs

Abstract

Scholarly studies of public sector entrepreneurship are emerging as a relatively new field mainly due to the long-term predominance of a rather narrow definition of entrepreneurship as a private market related phenomenon. Changes in economic, social and political development, however, call for innovativeness, not only in the market but also in civil society organizations and public sector to adjust organizing of solutions to societal problems and welfare policy delivery in a way that would more adequately address current societal needs. Societal challenges of today are claimed to require entrepreneurship in its many forms and societal sectors. Among other authors, Sabel & Zeitlin (2010) acknowledge variety and innovativeness in public policy processes and institutions in shifting EU contexts as essential for the effective functioning and thus survival of the EU multilevel governance system. Regardless of these calls, previous research on public sector entrepreneurship questions whether such entrepreneurship is at all possible or even desirable. This panel is concerned with whether and how manifestation of entrepreneurship in collaboration between public as well as private and civic actors enables enhancing the responsibility of elected political representatives for the local delivery of more adequate welfare services or solutions to politically prioritised development goals. Further research on the entrepreneurial action and innovativeness as well as its characteristics and effects in public policy processes is therefore required to examine those issues. This panel calls for papers aiming to contribute to further conceptualization of entrepreneurship – initially departing from but not confined to Schumpeter’s (1942) popularized process of creative destruction of institutionalized patterns – in public policy processes and its relation to innovativeness – conceptualized by Everett Rogers (1962) as new ways of acing, interacting and resource organizing in organizing solutions to policy problems. We especially welcome empirical papers offering different approaches to exploring manifestation of collective entrepreneurial actions and innovations and explaining aspects of entrepreneurship in the collective actions and the politics of public policy processes. We also encourage papers exploring the effects of collective public sector entrepreneurship especially in the fulfillment of local and regional sustainable development goals. Of interest here also is the effect of entrepreneurial actions and the implementation of innovations on the roles and responsibilities of public servants and elected representatives in welfare policy delivery.

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