Integrating Leadership and Industrial Policy in Enhancing Public Financial Performance: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

This study aims to synthesize the role of leadership and industrial policy in influencing public financial performance in the post-COVID-19 context, in the midst of limited studies that integrate the two variables comprehensively. This study uses a systematic literature review (SLR) approach based on the PRISMA guidelines by analyzing 50 selected articles from the Scopus database through thematic analysis techniques and narrative synthesis. The results of the study show that industrial policy does not directly affect public financial performance, but through mediation mechanisms such as digitalization, innovation, and governance quality. Meanwhile, leadership plays a key factor that determines the effectiveness of policy implementation through strengthening coordination, institutional capacity, and policy consistency. This finding also reveals that most of the literature still uses economic performance indicators as a proxy, so direct measurement of public financial performance is still limited. This research contributes by developing an integrative conceptual framework that connects structural (industrial policy) and agency (leadership) variables in explaining public financial performance. These findings have important implications for the formulation of more adaptive and institutional capacity-based policies in dealing with post-global crisis dynamics.