Innovation, Bureaucracy, and Public Policy: a Study of Innovation Adoption By Local Government

Abstract

rT HE COMPLEXITIES of modern life, increasing affluence, social problems, and many other factors have dramatically increased the size and responsibilities of local governments.' To cope with their added responsibilities municipal bureaucracies have adopted new technologies and procedures to provide additional services and/or to reduce spiraling costs. Yet there have been few systematic examinations of influences on innovation adoption by local governmental agencies since Mohr's study of health agencies in four states and one Canadian province conducted in the early 1960s.2 Earlier studies of innovation in local government were largely concerned with diffusion or geographic spread3 and usually ignored reasons for innovation adoption. Thus, there has been no nation-wide study of the determinants of innovation adoption in cities, nor any comparison of innovation adoption among types of local governments (e.g. school districts vs. municipal governments). This is a study of innovation adoptions by housing authorities, school districts, public libraries, and municipal governments in American cities with 1960 populations of 50,000 or more utilizing the innovation-decision model suggested by Downs and Mohr.4 For each unit of analysis two innovations are examined: one product innovation, defined as an innovation requiring the adoption of a physical product, and one process innovation, an innovation requiring a change in method. Table I lists the innovations studied.