The Entrepreneurial Public Servant: Unlocking Employee Potential Through Recognition and Inclusion

• Published date: 01 March 2025
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X231201963
• Author: Roberto Vivona,Jenny M. Lewis
• Date: 01 March 2025
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X231201963

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2025, Vol. 45(1) 56 –76

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0734371X231201963

journals.sagepub.com/home/rop

Article

The Entrepreneurial

Public Servant: Unlocking

Employee Potential Through

Recognition and Inclusion

Roberto Vivona1 and Jenny M. Lewis2

Abstract

Can public sector employees act as entrepreneurs and help solve some of the world’s

most pressing problems? Amid crises such as COVID-19, rising inflation, and climate

disasters, governments worldwide are facing credibility and legitimacy crises, and the

need for innovation and entrepreneurship in the public sector has never been more

critical. To understand how to make public servants more entrepreneurial, this study

explores the relationship between human resource management (HRM) practices,

person-environment fit theory, and attitudes toward public sector entrepreneurship.

Based on data from the 2019 Australian Public Service census survey (n = 92,128), this

study finds the practices of promoting employee recognition and inclusion exhibit

the strongest effects on entrepreneurial attitudes of public servants, via person-job

and person-organization fit respectively. However, practices such as performance

appraisal and trainings show irrelevant effects. Overall, this article suggests that public

managers should instill a culture of inclusion, innovation, and participation within

their organizations to unleash the entrepreneurial public servant, while they need to

rethink their performance appraisal systems to serve better the purpose of improving

employees fit with their tasks.

Keywords

public sector entrepreneurship, person-job fit, person-organization fit, human

resource management, Australia, PLS-SEM

1Nord University Business School, Bodø, Norway

2School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Corresponding Author:

Roberto Vivona, Nord University Business School, Universitetsalléen 11—Mørkvedgården MG260, Bodø

8049, Norway.

Email: roberto.vivona@nord.no

1201963ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X231201963Review of Public Personnel AdministrationVivona and Lewis

research-article2023

Vivona and Lewis 57

Introduction

Can public sector employees act as entrepreneurs and help solve some of the world’s

most pressing problems? In our collective imagination, the story of the archetypal

public servant is not the story of a main character who has an ambitious vision, who

takes personal risks, and who is driven by a fighting spirit to create a new tomorrow;

instead, it is generally the story of an employee who does the bare minimum, does not

take risks, is lazy, and—maybe—even corrupt (Willems, 2020). These stereotypes are,

however, very distant from reality: the “entrepreneurial public servant” is not a fiction,

and research has reached widespread consensus that, under the right conditions, public

sector employees are driven by a strong passion and motivation to serve the public and

do whatever they can (and far beyond what they would be required to do) to see inno-

vative solutions come to life (Demircioglu & Audretsch, 2017; Lavee & Cohen, 2019).

Moreover, amid crises such as COVID-19, rising inflation, and climate disasters,

governments worldwide are facing credibility and legitimacy crises, and the need for

innovation and entrepreneurship in the public sector has never been more critical.

Nevertheless, while the scholarships on human resource management (HRM) and

organizational behavior have been concerned with several employee attitudes, such as

job satisfaction, affective commitment, and turnover intentions (see, e.g., Chordiya,

2022; Demircioglu, 2023), our knowledge about unlocking public sector employees’

full potential and making them more innovative, proactive, and thus entrepreneurial,

is limited. This is unfortunate, since recent experiences during the COVID-19 pan-

demic demonstrate that entrepreneurial public sector organizations and employees can

indeed solve problems in times of uncertainty and create public value (Kauzya &

Niland, 2020).

Therefore, there is a need to clarify this gap both from a theoretical and from a

practical perspective. Considering that, by employing the employee fit theoretical

perspective (i.e., by looking at the compatibility of public sector employees with

their work environment), this article explores the relationship between five distinct

HRM practices (namely, performance appraisal, training and learning, employee

recognition, inclusion, and wellbeing) and entrepreneurial attitudes of public ser-

vants. This article aims to answer the following research question: “what are the

HRM practices public managers can employ to support entrepreneurial attitudes of

public sector employees?.

To answer this question, this article uses data from the 2019 Australian Public

Service (APS) Census Survey (n = 92,128), conducted by the Australian Public

Service Commission (APSC, 2021) to collect opinion data from public servants as a

basis to build better workplace capability and environment. As the public service of

the future increasingly needs innovative and proactive public servants, the findings of

this study contribute both to human resource and organization theory, by providing a

theoretical link between HRM practices and entrepreneurship in established organi-

zations, and to practice, by showing that instilling a culture of inclusion, innovation,

and participation within public sector organizations is fundamental to unleash the

entrepreneurial public servant.