Institutional Leadership and Perceived Performance: Evidence from the Korean Minister Survey*

Few empirical studies have explored Selznick’s ideas on institutional leadership’s role in creating, nourishing, and maintaining public institutions. Reconsidering and expanding Selznick’s perspective, this study explores how perceived ministerial performance is associated with institutional leadership styles. Using data from the 2007 Korean Minister Survey, this study develops five types of institutional leadership (visionary, persuasive, resilient, coalition network, and maintaining) derived from an exploratory factor analysis and tests their association with ministers’ performance. It suggests that visionary leadership and persuasive leadership are the primary determinants of Korean ministers’ performance, and their effects are greater for ministers without presidential support. Resilient leadership and coalition network leadership are also significantly associated with ministers’ performance, but maintaining leadership has little effect on it. Moderating effects on the relationship between leadership type and performance include presidential support and the presence of a performance crisis. Further research is needed to develop different measures for ministerial performance from different sources in order to avoid the common method bias.