The Effects of Public Service Recognition, Job Security and Staff Reductions on Organizational Involvement

Abstract

Times have changed for public employees. Public servants now are faced with an economic and political climate has dramatically altered working conditions at all levels of government employment. Retrenchment and increasing anti-public employee political rhetoric present public sector organizations and employees with unaccustomed turmoil. Bernard Rosen notes that the last two administrations have engaged in derogatory criticism of the civil service to a degree unprecedented in the last 100 years. These largely unwarranted attacks have had two serious consequences: (1) they have affected adversely the confidence of the American people in the administrative institutions of government; and (2) they have undermined the morale and performance of federal employees.' This abstract notion of a lack of citizen confidence in administrative institutions translates into low levels of recognition for public employees' contributions. This paper examines whether these conditions are likely to affect employees' psychological attachment to the work place, organizational involvement. Widespread criticism and low morale are recognized and often lamented facts of life in the practitioner community. Indeed, there is a felt need for an advocacy group, the Public Employees Roundtable, to offset these conditions.2 These conditions have received increasing attention among public administration researchers as well. Recent efforts have explored the motivation and reward structures available to public employees in this era of cutback and civil service reform.3 Those analyses indicate public employees are motivated by a variety of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, including public service motivation, merit pay, and job security. Under conditions of general government