Barriers to innovation, coping strategies, and the national context: Evidence from Singapore

Despite increasing attention to barriers to public sector innovation (PSI), most studies focus narrowly on identifying these barriers while overlooking the coping strategies used to overcome them. Moreover, the literature remains heavily concentrated in Western contexts, limiting its applicability to other contexts. Using data from the United Nations Public Service Award (UNPSA), this study examines the nature of barriers to PSI and coping strategies to address them through an analysis of 147 innovation cases in Singapore. The findings suggest that interaction-specific barriers emerge as the most prevalent, highlighting the challenges posed by collaboration in hierarchical administrative contexts. Public sector organizations employ both framing and fixing strategies to address barriers, with framing used more frequently. Overall, this study makes contributions to innovation scholarship and practice by identifying the most significant barriers, offering strategies to overcome them, and demonstrating how the national context shapes both barriers to innovation and the strategies to overcome them.