Impact of Leadership Behavior on Entrepreneurship in State-Owned Enterprises: Evidence from Civil Servant Management Aimed at Improving Accountability

Abstract

This paper systematizes the theoretical foundation and empirical evidence of the impact of leadership behavior on entrepreneurship in state-owned enterprises, and the difference between state-owned enterprises that applied management based on the accountability of leaders, and those that did not. The paper uses the OLS regression model to identify the impact of leadership behavior on the entrepreneurship of state-owned enterprises by using data from a survey of 259 civil servants in Vietnamese state-owned enterprises. In our sample, 109 respondents belonged to the category of state-owned enterprises that did not apply management based on accountability, and 140 were state-owned enterprises that applied management based on accountability. The findings show that leadership behavior has a positive impact on the entrepreneurship of state-owned enterprises that do and do not apply management based on accountability, with results of 0.305 and 0.022, respectively. Moreover, the regression model is used to identify the factors that influence leadership behavior, including vision and wage policy having a statistical significance and positive impact on the leadership behaviors in all the state-owned enterprises. Additionally, some factors, including policy building, hi-tech usage, culture, teamwork, and training policy have positive impacts on leadership behavior in Model 1, and encouragement, monitoring, responsibility, and recruitment policy had positive impacts in Model 2 among the state enterprises. Additionally, this paper recommends some policies to promote leadership behavior in state enterprises in Vietnam.