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This thesis investigates how innovation tensions surface and are managed when a public organization intends to build support for innovation. Based on paradox theory, the study conceptualizes innovation tensions as persistent, interdependent contradictions that cannot be resolved but must be confronted and worked through. This research is contextually situated as an insider research project, where the author works as an embedded researcher within a Swedish municipality, combining academic and practical responsibilities.

Public sector innovation is inherently paradoxical, shaped by the tensions it faces between the need for flexibility, experimentation, relevance, and the principles of democratic governance, which emphasize stability, accountability, and predictability. The thesis introduces three key sources of the paradoxes that influence innovation support in the public sector: (1) the innovation imperative; (2) organizational fragmentation at the local level; and (3) the conflict between risk taking and responsibility.

Adopting a multilevel analytical approach, the study examines how innovation tensions surface and how responses to them have both organizational and individual dimensions. It finds that responses to tensions are multidimensional and dynamic, and influenced by a continuous interplay between organizational and individual level factors.

Central in shaping how innovation is supported within fragmented organizations is the identified phenomenon of departmental variation. Siloed operations and departmental drift present ongoing challenges for maintaining support for innovation within organizations. Thus, innovation support must be both intentionally built, through strategic ambitions reflected in both policy and routines, and actively balanced and maintained by individual managers, by continuously countering organizational biases toward stability and fragmentation. 

The thesis concludes that, for systematic innovation to take place, a more nuanced understanding of what a supportive environment means should be developed for public sector organizations. This concept could better capture the evolving interplay between innovation and standard operations within public sector organizations and offer a valuable framework for understanding the tensions associated with the inherent paradox between innovation and democracy in the public sector and to the further development of appropriate forms of support.