1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The concept of public entrepreneurship has recently been established based on new public management, which focuses on developing competitiveness to drive innovative public work processes and provide excellent public service. Proactive and competitive government management policies on enhancing public entrepreneurship transformation have been determined as key success factors to support the achievement of organizational performance, especially for provincial administration organization as a local government agency in Nigeria (Oyebanji et al., 2020). 

The ideal government is for managing the affairs of the whole society. The society compose of bourgeoisies, the artisan, technocrats the peasants or the masses. All are in an effort of making the society worthy of living for its citizens.

The government has the power to make law and enforce them with all the mean of collusion it care to employ. This could be upon individuals, clubs or association, companies or industries within its area of jurisdiction.

The set of rules or regulation made by government to control all spheres of the society it governed could be found stated in its policy like government policy, foreign police, education policy and social policy etc. the position of any government on any matter can easily be acquainted will through the study of its policies. 

Generally speaking, government policies are means to set standard of operation procedure. A policy is designed to facilitate strategy implementation and how to counter act tendencies for part of the organization to reset or reject the chosen strategy.

The decentralization of public power and budget to build public entrepreneurs is considered one of the major turning points of the bureaucratic system Public entrepreneurship focuses on creating work innovation in order to improve public service quality and to meet public requirements with an appropriately flexible working system, achieving high performance, accepting specified risk, and finally resulting in the achievement of public goals. Many transformational projects have been launched to pivot government agencies toward public entrepreneurship such as establishing digital communities, supporting digital innovative start-up networks, and promoting digital parks for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (Sangwanna et al., 2014). Although the influence of government policy on organizational performance is well explored (Rodrigo et al., 2019; Haseeni et al., 2015), the mediating role of public entrepreneurship in the context of provincial administration organization as local government agency in Nigeria remains in question.

Therefore, this research study aims to address this question and explore it in further detail. The objective of this research study is to investigate the effects of government policy on organizational performance through the mediating role of public entrepreneurship, in the context of provincial administration organization. The results of this research study could be applied as strategic guidelines for local government organizations to enhance organizational performance.

The paper begins with a review of the concepts and theories related to government policy, organizational performance, and public entrepreneurship in order to conceptualize the research conceptual framework and hypotheses development. The research methodology, data collection, analysis of data and the research results are later presented. Next, the proposed recommendation on public entrepreneurship transformation and public organizational performance enhancement as well as managerial implications and government suggestions are discussed. Finally, conclusion of the research findings and recommendations for future researches are documented.

Therefore this research work aims at bringing to limelight the effect of government policy on private enterprises with much emphasis on global soap and detergent industry Asa-dam area Ilorin Kwara state.

1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT

Organizational performance has become a significant indicator to measure ultimate outcomes compared to desired outcomes, especially in government organizations. Organizational performance has been defined as the process or action of performing a task towards the ultimate result of operations (Kearney et al., 2018). It can be seen that public organizational performance seems to be directly influenced by government policy implementation (Akinyemi et al., 2018). Currently, a public entrepreneurship policy has been launched by the government to increase innovative and competitive public outcomes, and consequently enhance public organizational performance. Importantly, public organizations have established various modern performance determinant methods in order to measure outcome achievement.

One of the various measurement instruments indicated a balanced scorecard, an organizational performance measurement system to reach the desired outcome, which provided a general outline for government organizations to achieve (Zastempowski, 2015). A balanced scorecard has gained widespread acceptance due to its use as a practical and a multi-dimensional performance measurement tool for public organizations. The performance management of a balanced scorecard applied in the public sector consists of four perspective dimensions: innovation and learning; efficiency of internal processes; public service quality; and effectiveness of goal achievement (Northcott et al., 2012).

The public performance will ultimately be driven by establishing the innovative and proactive government management policy and implementing public entrepreneurship in public organizations, in order to achieve desired organizational outcomes according to the rapid change of the external environment (Rodrigo et al., 2019). It can be seen that the concept of entrepreneurship within the public sector establishes a vital impact on public sector organizational performance including growth, development and productivity (Oyebanji et al., 2020). Therefore, this research study focuses on the effects of government policy on organizational performance in order to investigate the direct and indirect effects of such relationships.