The conference will explore how public administration and governance can be transformed in order to enhance innovation in public services and policy. Rising expectations, fiscal constraints and the growing number of wicked problems and policy deadlocks spur the need for public innovation. Public and private actors must interact and collaborate in order to define problems and challenges, generate creative ideas and build ownership to new and bold solutions.




Enhancing public innovation through multi-actor collaboration requires a profound transformation of the public sector. Elements associated with New Public Management need to be rethought and downplayed, whereas new elements associated with New Public Governance, Public Value Management, the Neo-Weberian state, Public Service Motivation etc. must be expanded. The conference seeks answer to the question of how this can be done: How can we transform the public sector in order to enhance innovation?




The conference will have three tracks: one for researchers, one for practitioners and one for students. The three tracks will run in parallel, but will come together on the last day of the conference. The research track is organized as a regional conference of the IRSPM.

The conference combines keynote speeches of distinguished scholars in public administration, governance and management with parallel panel sessions. In the panels we welcome conceptual, theoretical and empirical papers dealing with pubic innovation and need and prospect for transforming public administration and governance. The panel titles are:




- Participation and Civic Engagement in Public Innovation

- Network Governance and Policy Innovation

- Innovation of Health Policies and Services

- New Roles for Politicians in Collaborative Innovation Processes

- Digitalization as a Driver of Public Innovation

- Social Entrepreneurship in Public Innovation

- Enhancing Innovation in Complex Organizations

- Reforming Accountability and Value-for-Money Systems

- Transformative Learning for Public Innovation

Abstracts must be submitted by 15 July 2012.




For updated program, practical information and more, please visit the conference website: www.sunrise.ruc.dk.

We are looking forward to receiving your scholarly contribution and meeting you in Roskilde in October!




The Roskilde University Sunrise Conference Secretariat

Building 24.2, Universitetsvej 4 , 4000 Roskilde, DENMARK Email: ahkrogh@ruc.dk, Web: www.sunrise.ruc.dk