Social and technology entities in an innovation development process: Preliminary findings of a qualitative exploration

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to elaborate main themes in an innovation development process by looking at relationships between people in leadership of the innovation. This is a new approach in studying leadership that is promising to explain the complexity of leadership by exploration of leaders in relation to the others. The data was collected from the National Shared Care Planning programme (a health-IT programme in New Zealand) through in-depth interviews and was analysed based on the General Inductive Approach. This report is a preliminary finding of parts of the data analysed. Findings indicated three themes of social intervention, intervention operationalisation, and adoption and behavioural change. The innovation, leadership and governance structure for it were all part of a social intervention. The operationalisation of this intervention including (change management and development of technology enabler) indicated the next important social and technology entities in this study. Comparing concepts found in leadership of this programme with another study (with similar way of theorising) indicated a potential to complement our understanding of what leaders should be sensitised about it. Relationships that could control people’s behaviour, power relations between stakeholders and possible role of intervention operationalisation groups are among them.