Fostering Public Sector Employees’ Innovative Behavior: The Roles of Servant Leadership, Public Service Motivation, and Learning Goal Orientation

• Author: Nhung Thi Hong Nguyen,Diep Nguyen,Nguyen Vo,Luu Trong Tuan
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997221100623
• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Date: 01 January 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997221100623

Administration & Society

2023, Vol. 55(1) 30 –63

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997221100623

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Article

Fostering Public Sector

Employees’ Innovative

Behavior: The Roles

of Servant Leadership,

Public Service

Motivation, and Learning

Goal Orientation

Nhung Thi Hong Nguyen1, Diep Nguyen2,

Nguyen Vo1, and Luu Trong Tuan3

Abstract

Although public employees’ innovative behavior is essential for ongoing

improvement of public services and thereby development of public

organizations, limited research has examined this topic—especially

in transition countries. Drawing on social cognitive theory, this study

theorizes that servant leadership fosters public sector employees’

innovative behavior through the sequential mediation roles of public

service motivation and learning goal orientation. Results from structural

equation modelling with multi-source data from Vietnam’s public sector

employee and manager surveys support the hypothesized model. Our

study sheds light on the drivers of public employees’ innovative behavior

in a less researched context.

1University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

2Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

3Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC, Australia

Corresponding Author:

Nhung Thi Hong Nguyen, School of Government, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City,

279 Nguyen Tri Phuong, Ward 5, District 10, Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam.

Email: nhungnth@ueh.edu.vn

1100623AAS0010.1177/00953997221100623Administration & SocietyNguyen et al.

research-article2022

Nguyen et al. 31

Keywords

innovative behavior, public sector employees, servant leadership, public

service motivation, learning goal orientation

Introduction

Rapidly changing social-economic contexts (Hansen & Pihl-Thingvad,

2019), increasing citizens’ demands, and higher pressure to “do more with

less” (Northcott & Taulapapa, 2012) have forced public sector organizations

to find novel ways to perform their services. Innovation in the public sector

is essential since it helps improve public service quality, citizen satisfaction,

and public organizations’ effectiveness and efficiency (de Vries et al., 2016;

Markey & Patmore, 2009; Stroud et al., 2018). In the innovation process,

public sector employees play a crucial role in initiating, facilitating, and

implementing bottom-up innovation in public sector organizations (Bernier

et al., 2015; Hansen & Pihl-Thingvad, 2019; Miao et al., 2018). Employees

can initiate as well as implement original ideas and solutions relating to pub-

lic services since they have first-hand experience of the public sector issues,

understand citizens’ needs, as well as interact with them in service delivery

encounters (Altshuler & Zegans, 1997; de Vries et al., 2016). As such, it is

important to study how to foster employees’ innovative behavior in the public

sector (Bysted & Hansen, 2015; Miao et al., 2018).

In the public sector, which is often argued to have strong institutional and

administrative constraints on innovation (Rainey, 1999), organizational lead-

ership can be an effective driver of employees’ innovative behavior (De Vries

et al., 2016; Miao et al., 2018). Servant leadership, which prioritizes subordi-

nates’ interests before the leaders’ and goes beyond organizational interests to

serve a broader community (Liden et al., 2008), has been seen as one of the

most appropriate leadership styles in public sector workplaces (Luu, 2016;

Miao et al., 2014; Schwarz et al., 2016). Recently, servant leadership has

been found suitable for fostering innovation in private firms (Cai et al., 2018;

Wang et al., 2019). However, public administration research has remained

quiet about the link between servant leadership and employees’ innovative

behavior.

Further research about whether and how servant leadership can influence

employees’ innovative behavior in the public sector is essential for at least

four reasons. First, little is known about the drivers of innovative behavior in

the public sector, limiting management practices in this aspect. Existing pub-

lic administration research has placed a much stronger focus on innovation at

the organizational level, such as administrative process innovation, techno-

logical process innovation, product or service innovation, and governance

32 Administration & Society 55(1)

innovation, than on public sector employees’ innovative behavior (De Vries

et al., 2016; Miao et al., 2018). Since employee innovative behavior is the

major source of public sector organizations’ innovation (Borins, 2000a,

2000b), which contributes to better public service delivery and organizational

effectiveness, our study responds to the need for further studies about the

antecedents of this behavior (Bysted & Hansen, 2015; Miao et al., 2018).

Second, even in the general management literature, research results about the

relationship between servant leadership and employee extra-role behavior

such as creativity and innovative behavior are still conflicting. For instance,

some studies found support for this relationship (Brière et al., 2021; Panaccio

et al., 2015), while others could not (Donia et al., 2016; Yoshida et al., 2014).

Further investigation of this link in general management contexts and the

public sector in particular is essential due to the important role of servant

leadership on fostering employees’ development, organizational effective-

ness, and social development in both uncertainty and non-uncertainty con-

texts (Gui et al., 2021; Lee et al., 2020; Sousa & van Dierendonck, 2021; van

Dierendonck & Sousa, 2016; Zhang et al., 2021). Our study aims to resolve

these conflicting results by seeking evidence for the important role of servant

leadership on various employees’ outcomes and contexts. Third, the mediat-

ing mechanisms underlying the influence of servant leadership on employ-

ees’ innovative behavior have not been fully understood, even in the general

management literature (Eva et al., 2019). Understanding of the mediating

factors is important to have appropriate strategies to foster employees’ inno-

vative behavior, especially in the public sector. More specifically, if servant

leaders want to enhance their employees’ innovative behavior, they can also

trigger these mediation mechanisms to further shape the target behavior.

Fourth, since research of public sector leadership and innovation predomi-

nantly occurred in Western and developed countries (de Vries et al., 2016),

we lack knowledge of the generalizability of these theories and findings to

different contexts. Further research in new contexts, such as Vietnam, can

help confirm whether these theories and concepts hold valid for non-Western

and transition countries, as well as offer relevant implications for the public

sector there.

The present study addresses the above concerns, drawing on social cogni-

tive theory (SCT) (Bandura, 1986, 1991) to investigate the underlying media-

tion mechanism through which servant leadership fosters public sector

employees’ innovative behavior in Vietnam, an Asian transition country. SCT

(Bandura, 1986, 1991) theorizes that environmental factors often influence

peoples’ behavior through the mediating role of personal cognitive processes.

Based on SCT, we propose that servant leadership can foster public sector

employees’ innovative behavior through the sequential mediating roles of