Mads Leth Felsager Jakobsen

Untangling the impact of Europeanization and globalization on national utility liberalization: a systematic process analysis of two Danish reforms

This article uses the liberalization of the Danish electricity and telecommunication sectors to examine the impact of globalization and Europeanization on institutional reforms like utility liberalizations. The reform processes in the two sectors constitute a puzzle with very similar circumstances but different processes. This makes it possible to the test a hypothesis common to key theories on the impact of Europeanization and globalization, namely that the impact of external pressure increases, the stronger, more unambiguous and comprehensive the pressure is. Based on the variation in the level of external pressure between the Danish electricity and telecommunication sectors, the hypothesis is tested a in systematic process analysis. The hypothesis is supported and can account for the puzzle. The article contributes to the literature on institutional reform and liberalization by testing the direct effect of external pressure, which has received insufficient attention in the literature.

Political Pressure, Conformity Pressure, and Performance Information as Drivers of Public Sector Innovation Adoption

ABSTRACT Why public organizations adopt and abandon organizational innovations is a key question for any endeavor to explain large-scale developments in the public sector. Supplementing research within public administration on innovation with the related literature on policy diffusion, this article examines how external factors such as conformity pressure from institutionalized models, performance information from other organizations, and political pressure affect innovation adoption. By the use of two survey experiments in very different political contexts—Texas and Denmark—and a difference-in-differences analysis exploiting a reform of the political governance of public schools in Denmark, we find that public managers respond to political pressure. We find no indications that they emulate institutionalized models or learn from performance information from other organizations when they adopt organizational innovations. The results thereby point to political pressure as an important factor behind large-scale adoptions of organizational innovations in the public sector.

A Two-Pronged Approach? Combined Leadership Styles and Innovative Behavior

ABSTRACT This article examines the relationship between transformational, transactional, and empowering leadership and the innovative behavior of public sector employees. Instead of investigating their association individually, this article focuses on the interaction between different types of leadership. The analysis is based on a survey from one of Denmark’s largest hospitals (n = 1,647). The main result is that empowering leadership, which focuses on employee capacity, moderates the association between transformational leadership, which is directed at motivation, and innovative behavior. The findings emphasize the importance of not only focusing on a single leadership style but also understanding how they work in combination.