Syed Asad Abbas Bokhari

Public organizations face higher demands for innovation while operating under institutional structures that prioritize stability and control. This study develops a theoretical model that explains how entrepreneurial leadership (intrapreneurship) strengthens innovation capability at public organizations. Although research on leadership and public sector innovation has expanded in recent years, the two literatures have evolved separately, leaving limited understanding of how leadership orientations shape the conditions needed for sustained innovation. This study integrates insights from public entrepreneurship, leadership theory, and innovation capability research to explain how intrapreneurship influences organizational processes that support continuous innovation. The model identifies five mediating mechanisms that translate leadership behavior into organizational capability: learning orientation, psychological safety, organizational agility, digital readiness, and absorptive capacity. It also specifies contextual moderators, including administrative burden, political support, digital infrastructure, public service motivation, and bureaucratic culture, which shape the effectiveness of intrapreneurship. This framework positions innovation capability as a multidimensional construct incorporating knowledge management capability, technological capability, collaboration and networking capability, dynamic capabilities, and digital transformation maturity. By linking intrapreneurship to innovation capability and ultimately to public value outcomes, the model advances the theoretical understanding of how leadership contributes to organizational adaptability and modernization. This study concludes by outlining implications for leadership development, administrative reform, and digital transformation, while identifying opportunities for future empirical research to test and refine the proposed relationships.

Smart city policy is often characterised as a problem of technology procurement. Cities are encouraged to implement sensors, platforms and analytics to become ‘smart’. However, several such initiatives result in fragmented systems, vendor dependency and symbolic innovation rather than sustained public value. This study argues that smart cities should be understood primarily as projects of institutional reform rather than as programmes of technology procurement. Drawing on state capacity theory, the study develops a conceptual framework that defines smartness through the following four institutional dimensions: governance, capacity, rules and incentives and administrative culture, with technology regarded as an embedded instrument rather than a defining driver. The framework is applied to two contrasting cases: Songdo, South Korea, and Tallinn, Estonia. Songdo exemplifies a technology‐saturated but institution‐light model, where intelligence is embedded in infrastructure while governance remains fragmented and externally shaped. Tallinn exhibits a governance‐first pathway in which digital systems are integrated into public institutions, supported by clear authority, internal capacity and adaptive rules. The comparison shows that technology strengthens existing institutional conditions rather than compensating for their absence. The findings demonstrate that fragmentation, pilotism and lock‐in are structural outcomes of weak governance capacity. Smartness emerges when public institutions can coordinate, learn and exercise authority over sociotechnical systems.

This study explores how artificial intelligence utilization in digital government, through AI-enabled service automation and AI-based decision support, contributes to digital government transformation, emphasizing the mediating roles of stakeholder trust and stakeholder participation. Grounded in stakeholder theory and public value theory, the research aims to understand the relational mechanisms that connect technological innovation to institutional change. A quantitative research design was employed using survey data collected from 412 stakeholders, including citizens, civil society members, public employees, and private actors, who had interacted with AI-driven government services in Pakistan. Structural equation modeling was used to test a conceptual model involving direct and indirect effects. Results reveal that both AI-enabled service automation and AI-based decision support significantly enhance stakeholder trust and participation, which in turn positively influence digital government transformation. Stakeholder trust emerged as a stronger mediator than participation. The findings highlight the importance of ethical, transparent, and participatory AI integration in public administration. Theoretically, the study extends digital governance literature by validating behavioral mediators in technology-driven reform. Practically, it offers strategic insights for policymakers on how to enhance stakeholder engagement and legitimacy in AI-based public systems. Overall, the study emphasizes that successful digital transformation is not solely technological, but also deeply relational and participatory.

This conceptual article aims to contribute to the literature by identifying and analyzing the four-stage model of building indigenous technological innovation capabilities in developing countries, particularly in Middle Eastern countries. In addition, this article explores factors affecting the environment and actors in the indigenous technological innovation capabilities process and applies the indigenous technological innovation capabilities-building model to the Saudi Arabian context. The research question guiding this study is: What are the key factors and challenges in indigenous technological innovation capability building for Saudi Arabia, and how do they influence Middle Eastern firms? We propose a four-stage model of indigenous technological innovation capability building in developing countries, particularly Saudi Arabia. The model comprises four stages: technology initiation, technology imitation, technological improvement, and technological innovation. Finally, this study concludes with theoretical contributions and future work.