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

2022/06/13 by Nhung Thi Hong Nguyen, Nhung Nguyen, Diep Nguyen +4 · 1 citation
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior #Public Policy and Administration Research #Social Capital and Networks

paper · doi:10.1177/00953997221100623

openalex publication_date 2022/06/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

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.

Citations

• Revisiting the Motivational Bases of Public Service: Twenty Years of Research and an Agenda for the Future
• Servant leadership: Development of a multidimensional measure and multi-level assessment
• Instrumental leadership: Measurement and extension of transformational–transactional leadership theory
• How (Not) to Solve the Problem: An Evaluation of Scholarly Responses to Common Source Bias
• Measuring Public Service Motivation: An Assessment of Construct Reliability and Validity
• The Role of Organizations in Fostering Public Service Motivation
• Organizational culture as a knowledge repository for increased innovative capacity
• Is More Ever Too Much? The Number of Indicators per Factor in Confirmatory Factor Analysis
• Sources of Method Bias in Social Science Research and Recommendations on How to Control It
• Evaluating Structural Equation Models with Unobservable Variables and Measurement Error

Cited by

• Predicting workplace creativity of university administrative staff: the mediating role of learning goal orientation

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