¿Bureaucrats and Innovators?

This paper presents the process and the results from the first “National Award on Municipal Creativity and Innovation”. This contest took place in Chile, during 2002 and 2003. It was really amazing the huge number of local civil servants willing to propose new solutions to community problems, beyond their daily duties. Voluntarily, 1.745 local civil servants participated with their innovative ideas.

Within the 341 Chilean municipalities, 271 participated in the contest (79,4%), which indicates the non-explored potential of this public sector area, bringing important highlights about where to privilege modernization efforts.

The contest showed the existence of an innovator potential within an institution that is commanded by a bureaucratic model. It is not a question of experts in innovation, but the civil servants responsible of diverse municipal duties, most of them with a routine character. These civil servants, with a long administrative carrier, who, according with the traditional interpretation, should have been “flattened” by the routine, were the ones to give up their ideas and who are willing in sharing them with whoever is interested in listen to them.

This experience brings concrete evidence of how many municipal civil servants are well disposed to contribute to the institutional modernization by their compromise, creativity and improvement capacity to understand and solve their daily challenges. It is amazing that, contrary to what one could priory have thought, these civil servants, while are implementing creative strategies to improve the service quality, they recognized themselves as “bureaucrats” (in Weber’s terms).

From the obtained background, the author characterized the civil servants who considered themselves as “innovators”. At the same time, the author researches on the civil servants motivations to participate and their relationship with the rest of the municipal staff.

The institutional practice analysis reveals some categories, which contributes to the understanding of the innovation concept within the municipal public management in Latin America.

The experience points out that real changes are possible by the multiplication of little transformations. In this case, the participants invite to believe in innovation and the improving capacity within the public action. It is not a case of long scale innovations, but innovations located in a smaller level, in the simple events on the daily work.