Μεθοδολογία για την ανάπτυξη της επιχειρηματικότητας στο δημόσιο τομέα

Abstract

While the term ‘entrepreneurship’ was almost exclusively associated with private sector it has now moved and is found with increasing frequency in the literature on the public sector and public administration. However, research on public entrepreneurs remains restricted to top and middle managers and elected politicians and focuses on policy promotion and initiatives concerning public sector transformation. Moreover contemporary research on corporate entrepreneurship in the private sector suggests that a strong relationship exists between the internal entrepreneur and the innovation process. Yet although a high percentage of the innovations introduced in the public sector arise from middle managers and front line staff and suggestions have been made on the factors that influence such behavior there is little empirical evidence on the ways policy makers should address such factors. The present thesis extends earlier research proposing a methodology for the strategic development of entrepreneurial behaviour in the Greek public sector. The thesis presents the results of a survey based on a random sample of 237 public servants working at prefectures the second level of Greek local government. Specifically we evaluate a short scale to assess entrepreneurial behaviour of front line staff in the Greek public sector using Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Bayesian Structural Equation Modeling. The evaluation includes tests of factor structure and reliability along with several hypotheses concerning the influence of several demographic factors and the "supportive context" to entrepreneurial behaviour. Moreover employing the internal marketing concept which holds that employees are viewed as internal customers and that contributes to employee effectiveness, full profile conjoint analysis and cluster analysis was applied. Drawing from earlier research different attributes that foster corporate entrepreneurship and their corresponding levels where used to form several scenarios which then were evaluated by public servants according to their preferences. Results of confirmatory factor analysis of the entrepreneurial behavior scale suggested a hierarchical factor structure with a super-ordinate entrepreneurial behaviour factor and three lower-level factors. Differences among public servants in their degree of entrepreneurial behaviour depending on their gender, education, years in public service being a department head or not are reported. In addition results of the Conjoint Analysis reveal the preferred way corporate entrepreneurship xii factors should be introduced to the public sector setting. Moreover four distinct clusters of respondents were identified. Research findings reported herein contribute to the entrepreneurship and strategic change management literature and demonstrate that the concept of "public entrepreneurship" is relevant for the average civil servant, revealing facets of entrepreneurial behavior of front line staff. Moreover the study argues that the there is a positive correlation between the supportive context as expressed by encouragement of initiatives and access to managerial information with entrepreneurial behaviour among public servants. Finally the findings of this thesis provide a well-documented framework in addressing corporate entrepreneurship in the public sector. Research findings are useful to policy makers interested in formulating a strategy that fosters corporate entrepreneurship in the public sector setting