Linkage between Leaders’ Behaviour in Performance Management, Organisational Justice and Work Engagement in Public Sector

Živilė Stankevičiūtė,Asta Savanevičienė

doi:10.3390/economies9010015

Abstract

In the last decade, leaders’ behaviour in performance management has been gaining increasing attention, arguing that it is beneficial in terms of improved employee attitudes, behaviour, and performance in the public sector. However, empirical support for such claim is still scant. Given the relevance of work engagement and organisational justice in the public sector and acknowledging a worldwide employee engagement crisis, the paper aims at revealing the linkage between leaders’ behaviour in performance management, organisational justice, and employee engagement in the public sector. In doing this, quantitative data were collected in a survey from employees working in the public sector in Lithuania (299 responses). The findings showed that goal setting and feedback had a significant and positive effect on employee engagement, supporting the theoretical notion that leaders’ behaviour in performance management was crucial in engaging people. As it was expected, goal setting and feedback had a positive effect on organisational justice; meanwhile, organisational justice significantly and positively predicted employee engagement. Turning to the mechanism by which leaders’ behaviour influences work engagement, it seems that organisational justice partly mediated the relationships between goal setting and employee engagement and fully mediated the relationships between feedback and work engagement. These findings affirm that public sector should strive for improving the leaders’ behaviour in performance management as it in turn might impact overall organisational performance.

Highlights

Responding to the call of the politicians and citizens to demonstrate the effectiveness and impact on complex problems (Blackman et al 2012), the public sector has been a subject of transformation for a couple of decades (De Vries and Nemec 2013; Teeroovengadum et al 2019)
The quantitative study was conducted in Lithuania, which is a special country, since it survived a long period of occupation, thirty years ago restored its independence and it survived a long period of occupation, thirty years ago restored its independence and fifteen years ago joined the European Union (EU) (Liobikienė et al 2020)
The findings are in line with the results of a study by Xanthopoulou et al (2009), which revealed that employees who received feedback were more likely to be vigorous, dedicated, and absorbed in their work tasks over the course of time. As it was mentioned before, the findings demonstrated that feedback quality predicted work engagement (H2b)

Summary

Introduction

Responding to the call of the politicians and citizens to demonstrate the effectiveness and impact on complex problems (Blackman et al 2012), the public sector has been a subject of transformation for a couple of decades (De Vries and Nemec 2013; Teeroovengadum et al 2019). With the aim to underpin the crises of confidence in the public sector (Osborne and Gaebler 1992; Hood 1991, 1995) and to enhance the government performance, the. New Public Management (NPM) approach was introduced to public sector organisations (Diefenbach 2009). The core idea of NPM was a stronger performance orientation, with emphasis on higher labour productivity, establishing standards and measures of performance, and a focus on outcomes rather than inputs (Osborne and Gaebler 1992; Hood 1991; Lynn 1998). Relying on the prior studies (Buchner 2007; Pulakos 2009; Aguinis 2014), debates in the field of public sector employee performance management mainly focus on two areas: the ways to best manage employee performance (West and Blackman 2015) and the benefits for the organisations and employees from well-designed and established performance management (Aguinis and Pierce 2008; Aguinis et al 2011). By focusing on goal setting and feedback as the components of leaders’

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