Promote or Deter: How Organizations Influence Public Service Motivation

Abstract

How an employee perceives their organization has an important influence on their feelings of public service motivation. The public service motivation literature has largely focused on the ways in which public service motivation influences outcomes related to organizational performance and public service outcomes. This research flips the causal arrow, examining how the way employees perceive their organization influences their feelings of public service motivation. Municipal employees in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota were surveyed to explore the relationship between perceived organizational traits and public service motivation. Using four linear regression models, we find evidence that organizations perceived as having human resource traits and symbolic traits each promoted the public service motivation of employees. The results also indicate that there may be a positive relationship between structural traits and a negative relationship between political traits and public service motivation.