Governing innovation with evidence: Innovation governance, evidence-informed decision-making and public institutional performance in Nigeria
Keywords:
evidence-informed decision-making; innovation governance; Nigeria; public institutional performance; public sector innovation; public administrationAbstract
Public institutions are expected to innovate while preserving legality, accountability and public value. Yet innovation governance and evidence-informed decision-making are often treated as separate reform agendas, leaving unclear how each contributes to organisational performance. This study develops an integrated organisational-capability perspective and examines the associations of innovation governance and evidence-informed decision-making with perceived public institutional performance in Nigeria. A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted across selected ministries, departments and agencies, yielding 234 analysable responses. Multiple regression results indicate that the two capabilities jointly explained 29.9% of the variance in perceived institutional performance. Innovation governance was positively associated with performance (B = .170, β = .156, p = .005), while evidence-informed decision-making showed the stronger association (B = .396, β = .397, p < .001). The findings suggest that structures for directing, coordinating and learning from innovation are important and that evidence-informed decision-making has the stronger independent association with perceived performance in the estimated model. The article contributes by positioning innovation governance and evidence use as distinct, related and potentially complementary organisational capabilities and by extending institution-level evidence from an under-represented African administrative context. Because the design is cross-sectional and perception-based, the results support association rather than causal inference.
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