Fragmented adoption: naming the pattern
A conceptual paper naming fragmented adoption, where every sector does the work asked of it and the relationships between them stay as they were.
Existing accounts of why adoption fails measure depth: how far a commitment reaches inside an institution. Decoupling, where an organisation adopts a policy on paper without changing its practice, is the classic case. Means-ends decoupling, where practice changes but never reaches the goal, is a close relative. That lens works when the commitment belongs to one sector.
Integrative frameworks do not belong to one sector. They ask sectors to change how they relate to each other, and depth cannot show whether that happened. The paper adds a second axis, scope, and names what appears in the gap: fragmented adoption. Every sector does the work asked of it, funds it and reports on it, while the relationships between sectors stay exactly as they were.
The pattern, in one switch
- Health
- Environment
- Finance
- Planning
Every sector does its part. The links between them stay as they were.
The sectors change how they work together. The framework becomes part of how government works.
A system in that state passes every test applied within a single sector. The paper works the pattern through the case of Wales and its Act of 2015.
I submitted it as coursework in August 2026 and am preparing a journal version. A pre-publication version is available on request.