Confucian Values and Public Service Motivation: The Mediating Role of Paradoxical Leadership

Although research of leadership and public service motivation (PSM) has been conducted in diverse cultural contexts, it remains understudied in Confucian Asia. The current study aims to examine how Confucian values influence PSM in the context of Vietnam and also attempts to investigate the mediating role of paradoxical leadership in this relationship. Integrating the culturally-endorsed implicit leadership theory (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004) with the knowledge on the social process of PSM (Perry, 2000; Vandenabeele, 2007), this study proposes to examine whether Confucian values are positively related to paradoxical leadership and such leadership is also positively related to PSM. This prediction was tested using a sample of 206 public managers-public employee dyads, drawn from different government departments in Vietnam. The analytical data procedures were outlined by PROCESS macro for SPSS developed by Hayes (2013). Results provide support for the mediation model that Confucian values were found to be positively related to paradoxical leadership, which, in turns, exerted a positive impact on PSM. The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of the relationships between Confucian values, paradoxical leadership, and PSM in the public sector of Vietnam. The findings are potentially extended to the public management systems in other countries that share some similar Confucian values like Vietnamese do in Asia. In terms of the practical implications, the public managers should communicate the positive characteristics of Confucian values and practice the use of paradoxical leadership behaviors in order to increase PSM among public employees.