Administrative innovation in municipal government

The purpose of this study is to identify those factors which account for administrative innovation in municipal government bureaucracies. Two dimensions of administrative innovation are examined: management and technology. Management innovation refers to procedures and methods by which policies are implemented. Technology innovation refers to the adoption of new physical products or processes. Multiple indicators of specific innovative practices are used to create a management scale and a technology scale and the two scales are then combined to create a composite administration innovation scale. In order to explain the dimensions of innovation the study employs a model comprised of three sets of independent variables: community variables, political system variables, and bureaucratic variables. Multiple regression analysis is used to examine the relationship between each set of independent variables and the dipensions of innovation. A second stage of analysis combines the three sets of explanatory variables into a single equation for each type of innovation. The results indicate that the three sets of variables are of significant power in explaining innovation, although as one moves from community variables to political variables to bureaucratic variables there is a decline in the amount of variation explained. Some variables are more important for certain types of innovation than for others, but population size, community growth rate, and electoral competition cut across the various types of innovation.