Radical or conservative? How Innovation Strategies Shape Public Servants' Policy Support in Digital Government Reforms

Ambidexterity innovation has been widely recognized as a pivotal driver of organizational innovation and performance enhancement in the private sector, whereas relevant research in the public domain remains fragmented. Notably, civil servants’ statutory accountability obligations is a key institutional constraint in public administration. This study, therefore, intends to investigate the interactive effects of digital government platform innovation strategies (exploitation vs. exploration)) and accountability obligations (hierarchical vs. horizontal obligation) on public servants’ policy support. Our survey experiment finds that exploitation strategy generate higher policy support than exploration strategy. Accountability obligations moderate the associations, hierarchical obligation amplifies the support gap between strategies, while horizontal obligation attenuates the gap and renders the mediation paths non-significant. This advantage operates through higher perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, which fully mediate the strategy-support relationship. The findings highlight aligning innovation strategy with accountability design and bolstering public servants’ digital capabilities is critical to converting platform reforms into sustained policy outcomes.