Public management innovation theory and practice: Bureaucratic attitudes toward ICT in South Korean government

This dissertation investigates two innovative Korean public management practices as an avenue of creating public values: Online Citizen Contacts and On-Nara Business Processing System. While the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) is widespread in the public sector and heavily researched, empirical research has rarely paid attention to the strategic potential embedded in technology beyond automation and efficiency. Emphasizing the coherence between theory and practice in the transformed contexts of public management, this research examines three questions. First, it surveys whether both public management practices have the potential capacity to be exploited. Second, it investigates whether a strategic public management framework can apply to the innovations practiced by the Korean government. Third, it examines what affects the comprehension of public managers toward the ICT-based public management practices.;Through the written survey, Korean public managers were asked to answer questions about the strategic utility of both practices. By analyzing their responses with factor analysis and regression analysis methods, this research reached several conclusions. First, Korean public managers understand the potential capacity inherent in the practices. Second, such potential however has not yet been articulated. Third, a strategic public management framework accordingly does not fit in both practices. The results indicate that the attitudes of Korean public managers toward ICT seem to have remained in the traditional bureaucratic framework while the new innovative public management practices offer an opportunity to exploit their strategic potential for creating public values. Fourth, this research also confirms the influences of several determinants such as training, education, job, technology ease of use, and recruitment on the comprehension of public managers about the innovative practices.;This research finds that the bureaucratic framework of public management programmed in the mindset of public managers might constrain the innovative use of such practices and thus claims that there is a gulf between actual practice and theoretical strategic potential that can be exploited. Finally this research concludes that the future development of Korean public management and e-government practices depends on the application of strategic public management theory to a professional practice that aims to close the gap, a potential opportunity to improve public management performance.