Examination of Employee Motivation in Public Organizations

Abstract

Motivation constitutes a central topic for business management, because of its critical impact on job performance. Therefore, understanding the dynamic mechanisms that organizations can use to promote and maintain employee motivation is of great interest for both scholars and practitioners. This study accordingly investigates how ethical and emotional forms of leadership might influence employee motivation and thus job performance. A survey-based study includes 607 employees working at public organizations, and the results of the structural equation modeling procedure indicate that both ethical and emotional leadership enhance employee motivation. In turn, employee motivation has a positive impact on job performance. The results also show that job performance exerts a negative effect on quitting intentions. Finally, interest in the private sector moderates the job performance–quitting intentions relationship. These findings provide theoretical contributions to extant literature, as well as important practical implications for managers.