Factors affecting to enhance the entrepreneurial orientation of executive level employees in the public service in Sri Lanka: Based on the case study at the ministry of education, Sri Lanka

Currently, most developing countries are facing the critical issue of under-performance of the public sector in their development process due to the lack of resources in the government. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to discover the relationship between managerial characteristics and entrepreneurial orientation, and the factors that are affecting to enhance the effectiveness of the public sector in Sri Lanka via using the concept of managerial characteristics and entrepreneurial orientation of the executive level employees based on the case study of the Ministry of Education, rather than increasing public funds. In this research, factors such as Innovativeness, Risk Taking and Pro-activeness are used to assess the Entrepreneurial Orientation, and Participatory Decision Making, Performance-based Rewards and Managerial Autonomy used to evaluate the managerial characteristics. Further, this study was used mix method and collect both quantitative and qualitative data. Meanwhile, 94 educational administrative officers filled the structured questionnaire, and participated to the interviews in the data collection process. Moreover, the authors followed both SPSS 20 version, and conversation-based content analysis. to analyse the collected data. Finally, as findings of the study, the authors revealed that, still, the Sri Lankan public sector consists of employees who are willing to contribute to the development of the country, but they do not have a space, and the Sri Lankan public sector can develop by changing the attitude of the public officers and managers in Sri Lanka rather than increase the public resources.