Public Service Motivation Theory Research Articles

Work Engagement in the Third Sector

It has been assumed that third-sector organizations attract ideologically oriented employees. Therefore, employees consider their work as more meaningful. However, employees’ ideological orientation has not been taken into account in previous studies on work engagement. With this in mind, the present study sets out to apply an extended job demand-resources (JD-R) model in a survey conducted with Finnish third-sector employees (N = 1,412). The results showed that third-sector employees report higher work engagement than employees generally in the work engagement studies. In addition to job demands and resources, work engagement is associated with public service motivation and value congruence. Thus, public service motivation theory offers more insight into third-sector employees’ work engagement than the conventionally used JD-R model.

Public Service Motivation Concepts and Theory: A Critique

With its growth in popularity, public service motivation (PSM) research has been subjected to increasing critical scrutiny, but with more focus on measurement and models than on concepts. The authors examinePSMagainst standard criteria for judging the strength of concepts (e.g., resonance, parsimony, differentiation, and depth). After providing a critique ofPSMconcepts, they conclude with suggestions for research programs that could improve the explanatory power ofPSMtheory.

PUBLIC SERVICE MOTIVATION IN THE POST‐COMMUNIST STATE

How well does public service motivation apply to occupational locus and focus in the post‐communist state? Survey data from the ISSP 2005 Work Orientations module gathered in five post‐communist Central and Eastern European countries and Russia are examined using multilevel binary logistic regression analysis. It is found that occupational focus is a more important correlate of public service motivation than is occupational locus in these post‐communist countries. Because the relative importance of work motives varies across countries, it is important to account for national context when developing a theory of public service motivation.

Explaining Public Service Motivation

Both leadership and public service motivation (PSM) are important issues in contemporary public administration. By connecting these issues, the aim of this article is to assess the impact of one particular type of transformational leadership behavior—promoting public values—on PSM development. Two hypotheses were tested with a dataset of 3,506 state civil servants in Belgium. The analysis shows that a positive relation exists and that it is moderated by a set of basic psychological needs (autonomy and competence), whereby it demonstrates the validity of an institutional theory of PSM.

Does Societal Culture Affect Public Service Motivation? Evidence of Sub-national Differences in Switzerland

ABSTRACT This article explores societal culture as an antecedent of public service motivation. Culture can be a major factor in developing an institution-based theory of public service motivation. In the field of organization theory, culture is considered a fundamental factor for explaining organization behavior. But our review of the literature reveals that culture has not been fully integrated into public service motivation theory or carefully investigated in this research stream. This study starts to fill this gap in the literature by using institutionalism and social-identity theory to predict how the sub-national Germanic and Latin cultures of Switzerland, which are measured through the mother tongues of public employees and the regional locations of public offices, affect their levels of public service motivation. Our analysis centers on two large data sets of federal and municipal employees, and produces evidence that culture has a consistent impact on public service motivation. The results show that Swiss German public employees have a significantly higher level of public service motivation on the whole, while Swiss French public employees have a significantly lower level overall. Implications for theory development and future research are discussed.

Public Service Motivation Theory and Voluntary Organizations

Research has shown that individuals with greater public service motivation (PSM) values are more likely to work for government, because government jobs offer more public service opportunities; the question then arises of whether they are also drawn into other activities that offer service opportunities, such as participation in voluntary organizations. This study examined the volunteering behavior of government employees in different domains. Using the Americans’ Changing Lives survey, logistic regression models were estimated to examine the relationship between employment in the government sector and self-reported volunteering in five different types of organization. The results indicated that government employees engage in significantly more volunteering than their private-sector counterparts. When separate models were run for volunteering in each organization type, controlling for several other factors, the results showed that these initial big differences were driven primarily by their volunteering in two specific types of organization: Educational institutions and political groups.

Does Person‐Organization Fit Matter in the Public ‐Sector? Testing the Mediating Effect of Person‐Organization Fit in the Relationship between Public Service Motivation and Work Attitudes

Public service motivation theory suggests that public service motivation is positively related to work attitudes, but person‐organization fit theory assumes that person‐organization fit completely mediates the relationship between public service motivation and work attitudes of public employees. This article investigates which theory better predicts attitudes toward work, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment of public employees, by testing hypotheses on (1) whether public service motivation directly influences work attitudes, or (2) whether person‐organization fit mediates the relationship between public service motivation and work attitudes, or (3) whether both hypotheses are true. Using survey data on civil servants in Korea, this article shows that public service motivation has not only a direct effect on but also an indirect effect on job satisfaction and ‐organizational commitment through its influence on person‐‐organization fit.

Public Service Motivation (PSM) and Support for Citizen Participation: A Test of Perry and Vandenabeele’s Reformulation of PSM Theory

This article examines how public service motivation (PSM) relates to public managers’ attitudes toward citizen participation. Perry and Vandenabeele suggest that PSM effects are moderated and/or mediated by self‐regulation and by the salience of an activity to self‐identity. Using data from Phase IV of the National Administrative Studies Project, latent model results suggest a direct, positive relationship between PSM and citizen participation evaluation. The relationship is not mediated by value congruence but rather is moderated by the perceived importance of the organization’s citizen participation efforts. The moderating effect has three interpretations: (1) PSM has a stronger relationship to evaluation as citizen participation becomes more important in the agency; (2) at low and medium PSM levels, the greater the importance of citizen participation, the lower its evaluation; or (3) at high PSM levels, the greater the importance of citizen participation, the higher its evaluation. This suggests that PSM is more germane for activities such as citizen participation, invoking relevant values as perceived organizational commitment increases.

Public service motivation as a predictor of attraction to the public sector

According to public service motivation theory, individuals with a strong public service orientation are attracted to government jobs. This proposition was investigated in three studies by measuring public sector motivation at a pre-entry level as an individual difference variable affecting perceptions of fit and organizational attraction. Results were consistent with a positive relationship between public sector motivation and attraction to both public sector and non-profit organizations. Despite substantial overlap between the constructs of public sector motivation and agreeableness, the present research indicated that public sector motivation has utility in predicting employment interests beyond the general personality factor of agreeableness.

Does Public Service Motivation Matter in Volunteering Domain Choices? A Test of Functional Theory

Functional theory suggests that people choose activities based on their perception of how well the work matches their personal motives.This process implies that worker motivations vary by activity even when controlling for typical motivational antecedents. Although this perspective is common in the volunteering literature, the public service motivation (PSM) literature has not formally considered functional theory hypotheses.Yet PSM theory asserts a relationship not to government work itself, but to activities related to public service such as volunteering.This study evaluates functional theory in regard to PSM based on using a survey of recipients of the Daily Point of Light Award (DPOL) and the President’s Community Volunteer Award (PCV). After controlling for common PSM antecedents such as gender, level of education, religious participation, and age, PSM and its subdimensions exhibit some variance across volunteering domains (viz., religious, educational/school, human services, and other), though most differences involve religious organizations.

What determines the behaviour and performance of health professionals? Public service motivation, professional norms and/or economic incentives

Theories about professions, public service motivation (PSM) and economic incentives provide different explanations for the behaviour and performance of the producers of public services. PSM theory expects higher performance in the public sector due to the higher levels of public service motivation among public employees, whereas the economic incentive perspective expects performance and behaviour to depend on economic incentives, and the sociology of professions stresses the importance of the employees' occupation. Few have attempted to integrate these three theories, and little is known about the relative strength of the motives. This article aims to analyse the effects of PSM, professional norms and economic incentives on the behaviour and performance of health professionals. Interviews, surveys and register data are used to investigate how professional norms, public service motivation and economic incentives affect the behaviour and performance of Danish dentists, GPs and orthopaedic surgeons. The results indicate that when strong professional norms exist, economic incentives are unimportant. As this is not always the case, however, the perspectives ought to be combined. Points for practitioners The article will be of interest to practitioners working with professionals, not only healthcare professionals, but all kinds of occupations with specialized, theoretical knowledge and occupational norms. Practitioners, especially those who design incentive systems for professionals, will find the article helpful, as it shows how both economic incentives and professional norms should be taken into consideration when such systems are designed. The key finding is that the performance and behaviour of professionals with different incentives is almost similar for services governed by firm norms within the profession, whereas performance and behaviour depend on the economic incentives in the absence of professional norms. This implies that while we may depend on the professional norms to constrain some behaviour, even highly professionalized employees can be moved by selfish motives.

Performance-related pay and work motivation: theoretical and empirical perspectives for the French civil service

At a time when the civil services of most OECD countries have embarked on a process of modernization of their practices, we are questioning the relevance of introducing performance-related pay systems, particularly in view of the, more often than not, negative effects on the work motivation of civil servants. The French civil service has recently decided to pay a part of its public officials on the basis of their performance, and we show how these individualized remuneration practices can, in the long term, undermine the public service motivations that drive some civil servants. Our reasoning is supported by the empirical results of studies conducted in the United States, in England and also in France, as well as on the developments of intrinsic motivation theories, combined with the developments of the public service motivation theory. Points for the practitioners Whereas the implementation of performance-related pay as an instrument of motivation has become widespread within the civil service, this article focuses on the difficulties inherent to these compensation practices. We underline in particular the negative effects of performance-related pay on the public service motivations of civil servants. As these specific motivations can be pushed aside, human resource management tools should be adopted that encourage the development of intrinsic motivation, such as task enlargement or enrichment or the implementation of participative management methods.

Toward a public administration theory of public service motivation

Public service motivation (PSM) is a prominent concept within current Public Administration, as it refers to the drive for public interested and altruistic behaviour. Although substantial empirical research on its nature and its impact is available, little is known on the origins of PSM. Led by cues provided by previous empirical research, this article seeks to develop a general theory of PSM, encompassing both causes and consequences of PSM. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, elements of institutional theory and motivational psychology are fused together, blending into an operational theory of PSM.

Is Doing Good Enough?

This study employed path analysis to examine a model of the organizational and individual correlates of workers' intrinsic job satisfaction in a sample of 221 human service workers. Work motivation theories, specifically Expectancy theory and Public Service Motivation theory, served as the theoretical foundation for the study. Results of the path analysis demonstrated that the model fit the data well. Statistically significant relationships were found among the following model variables: (1) Extrinsic job satisfaction affected intrinsic job satisfaction; (2) Personal responsibility and service quality perceptions affected extrinsic satisfaction; and (3) Empowering management practices affected all the other study variables. These findings suggest that although human services workers' altruistic desires may drive their interest in their jobs, they do have to feel empowered by management, responsible for their work and, most interestingly, they need to feel extrinsically rewarded and recognized for their work. These findings as well as implications for management in human services are discussed.

Public-Service Motivation: Building Empirical Evidence of Incidence and Effect

Three secondary data sources are used to answer four questions that relate to the theory of public-service motivation. The questions focus on the incidence of public-service reward motivations, consistency of these motivations over time, their impact on organizational performance, and the ramifications of a publicservice ethic for the theory of representative bureaucracy. Using descriptive and multivariate statistics, the analyses conclude that there are generalizable and stable differences in the reward motivations of public- and private-sector employees. There is also evidence that public-service motivation in the federal sector is positively related to organizational commitment. In contrast, there is no evidence that public-policy attitudes vary between those who are and those who are not public service oriented.

Special Obligations to Compatriots

Previous articleNext article No AccessSpecial Obligations to CompatriotsAndrew MasonAndrew Mason Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 107, Number 3Apr., 1997 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/233743 Views: 38Total views on this site Citations: 39Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1997 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Emily Berkman, Jonna Clark, Douglas Diekema, Nancy S Jecker A world away and here at home: a prioritisation framework for US international patient programmes, Journal of Medical Ethics 48, no.88 (Mar 2021): 557–565.https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2020-106772Sergi Morales‐Gálvez Is speaking one's own language(s) a right?, Nations and Nationalism 28, no.22 (Jan 2022): 387–401.https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12795Ugur Altundal The open borders debate, migration as settlement, and the right to travel, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 9 (Feb 2022): 1–25.https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2022.2040202Tse-Min Wang, Arjen van Witteloostuijn, Florian Heine A Moral Theory of Public Service Motivation, Frontiers in Psychology 11 (Sep 2020).https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.517763Marcia Baron, Taylor Rogers Patriotism and Impartiality, (Jul 2020): 409–427.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54484-7_2Michael S. 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