Integrating Public Service Motivation in the Job-Demands-Resources Model: An Empirical Analysis to Explain Employees’ Performance,Absenteeism, and Presenteeism

Public service motivation (PSM) is a focal construct in public management research, and while sound evidence exists that PSM is positively associated with several desired outcomes, knowledge on the underlying mechanisms which explain these associations and on potential negative consequences of PSM remains limited. Addressing these research gaps, this study investigates how PSM relates to relational job resources, work engagement, and outcomes. We thereby account for both direct and moderating effects of PSM and consider positive (employee performance) and negative outcomes (sickness absenteeism and presenteeism). We empirically test our model in the German public sector and find that the PSM dimensions relate differently to the assessed outcomes, providing varying support for our hypotheses. In particular, commitment to public value and compassion seem to drive the positive effect of PSM on employee performance, whereas self-sacrifice and client orientation are linked to reduced absenteeism, and only compassion is associated with increased presenteeism.     

A Strategy for Building Public Service Motivation Research Internationally

As public service motivation research grows qualitatively and quantitatively, some scholars question its appropriateness for international applications. This essay sets out a strategy of convergence for international research and measurement approaches. Studies that assess commonalities in public service motivation content internationally are analyzed in order to develop a broader conceptual and more operational definition as well as consequently a more universal public service motivation construct. Public service motives, according to this review, are based on self‐sacrifice and fall into three categories: instrumental, value‐based, and identification. The dimensions of the public service motivation construct are refined along the lines of attraction to public participation, commitment to public values, compassion, and self‐sacrifice. Researchers are urged to include all of its dimensions within their empirical studies to advance contemporary public service motivation studies.     

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.     

Unionization and Work Attitudes: How Union Commitment Influences Public Sector Job Satisfaction

This article explores whether union commitment dampens public sector job satisfaction. By examining the connection between union commitment and two workplace attributes that are presumed to be more prevalent in public sector workplaces—perceptions of higher red tape and greater public service motivation—this article develops three hypotheses exploring the direct and indirect relationships between union commitment and public sector job satisfaction. The findings from a series of structural equation models indicate that union commitment directly increases members’ job satisfaction, but it more prominently increases members’ job satisfaction indirectly by reducing perceived red tape and enhancing public service motivation.     

Applying Self-Determination Theory to Understand Public Employee’s Motivation for a Public Service Career: An East Asian Case (Taiwan)

The research on employee motivation for choosing a public service career has largely been grounded in the intrinsic-extrinsic dichotomy along with limited motives such as job security, instrumental reward, and public service motivation (PSM). Such an approach narrows the view of researchers, especially those in cultures where major reasons for choosing a public service career exceed these factors and the intrinsic-extrinsic dichotomy. By employing self-determination theory (SDT) to examine data collected in Taiwan, an East Asian cultural setting, a measurement instrument is developed that captures five major motivations for a public service career. A discussion of applying this survey instrument for future research follows.     

Public Service and Motivation: Does Mission Matter?

This study advances our understanding of employee work motivation and performance in the public sector by reinterpreting the literature on public service motivation within the psychological framework of goal theory. An empirical test of this new framework suggests that goal theory provides a strong theoretical foundation for understanding the independent contributions of task, mission, and public service to employee work motivation and performance. The importance of an organization's mission increases employee work motivation in the public sector by making the job more important, even after controlling for the effect of performance-related extrinsic rewards.     

Comparing Affective Commitment in the Public and Private Sectors: A Comprehensive Test of Multiple Mediation Effects

Employees’ organizational commitment is associated with a number of positive outcomes, such as employee motivation, job satisfaction, productivity, and retention. But previous research has suggested that there may be important sector differences in both commitment and its explanations, yet results are very mixed. We study sector differences in affective organizational commitment among 1,043 public and private office workers who perform very similar tasks across sectors, testing the influence of factors thought to explain commitment and expected to vary between the sectors. We propose that the mixed results are due to different variables mediating the relationship between sector and organizational commitment. Conducting a multiple mediation analysis, we find that more hierarchy negatively mediates the relationship between public sector employment and organizational commitment. On the other hand, the relationship between public sector employment and organizational commitment is positively mediated by public service motivation and participatory management. This highlights the importance of not only studying simple sector differences, but also including relevant individual and organizational-level variables that can explain the mechanisms behind such differences.     

Employee Empowerment,Employee Attitudes,and Performance: Testing a Causal Model

The last three decades have witnessed the spread of employee empowerment practices throughout the public and private sectors. A growing body of evidence suggests that employee empowerment can be used to improve job satisfaction, organizational commitment, innovativeness, and performance. Nearly all previous empirical studies have analyzed the direct effects of employee empowerment on these outcome variables without taking into account the mediating role of employee attitudes. This article contributes to the growing literature on employee empowerment by proposing and testing a causal model that estimates the direct effect of employee empowerment on performance as well as its indirect effects as mediated by job satisfaction and innovativeness. The empirical analysis relies on three years of data from the Federal Human Capital Survey/Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and a structural equation modeling approach, including the use of lagged variables. The results support the hypothesized causal structure. Employee empowerment seems to have a direct effect on performance and indirect effects through its influence on job satisfaction and innovativeness, two key causal pathways by which empowerment practices influence behavioral outcomes.     

Public Service Motivation: A Test of the Job Attraction–Selection–Attrition Model

ABSTRACT

Public service motivation (PSM) research suggests that PSM influences employee sector choice, yet relatively little research examines how time moderates this relationship. In this research we examine public service motivation among private and public sector lawyers. Using survey data that measure sector of employment at multiple time periods, we investigate the stability of the relationship between individual reward orientations and sector employment choice over time. Our findings suggest that while PSM may not clearly predict the employment sector of a respondent's first job, it does increase the likelihood that a respondent's subsequent job is in the public sector.     

Job Choice and Performance: Revisiting Core Assumptions about Public Service Motivation

Although there has been considerable enthusiasm for public service motivation (PSM) research in recent years, two of PSM's fundamental assumptions have been relatively untested: its impacts on job choice and on job performance. Using panel data from two different studies, we offer stronger observational tests of these core assumptions. The findings provide mixed evidence. When testing PSM's effect on employment choice, we find that PSM measured during a law student's first year predicts the sector in which they are employed after graduation three years later. In a separate study investigating PSM's effect on job performance, we find that government employee PSM does not predict employee absenteeism or supervisor assessments of their in-role and extra-role performance. Our findings support recent calls for a more nuanced theory and analyses of PSM to help better understand its implications for recruiting, retaining, and motivating the workforce used to provide public goods and services.     

Public Service Motivation,Organizational Social Capital,and Knowledge Sharing in the Korean Public Sector

This article investigates whether public service motivation (PSM) and organizational social capital predict knowledge sharing in the public sector. The hypothesized relationships in the proposed model are verified with the online survey data of 506 public employees in Korea. The test results show that the two dimensions of PSM (attraction to public service and commitment to public values) and the trust component of organizational social capital are both positively related to knowledge sharing in the Korean public sector, and that the associability component of organizational social capital is indirectly associated with knowledge sharing through its influence on PSM. The article discusses the ways that PSM and organizational social capital may contribute to overcome the social dilemma of knowledge sharing in public organizations. It also suggests that there is need for further research on the individual dimensions of the PSM construct.     

So Hard to Say Goodbye? Turnover Intention among U.S. Federal Employees

Why do U.S. federal government employees choose to leave the federal service? By focusing on turnover intentions, this article develops propositions about why employees anticipate leaving their jobs along three dimensions: (1) demographic factors, (2) workplace satisfaction factors, and (3) organizational/relational factors. Two distinct measures of turnover intention are advanced that reflect those who intend to leave their agency for another position within the federal government and those who intend to leave the federal government for an outside position. The 2006 Federal Human Capital Survey is used to test the impacts of three clusters of independent variables on these measures of turnover intention. The findings suggest that overall job satisfaction and age affect turnover consistently. Practical recommendations are outlined for public managers seeking to boost employee retention.     

Gender Dimensions of Public Service Motivation

Feminist scholars of public administration have critiqued the dominance of masculine imagery in public administration theory and practice. However, public service motivation is one area of public administration discourse that contains both feminine and masculine imagery. Focusing on Perry's multidimensional public service motivation scale, the authors borrow from a range of social science literatures to contend that compassion is a feminine dimension of public service motivation, whereas attraction to policy making and commitment to public service are masculine dimensions. Data from a survey of public managers in state health and human service agencies reveal that women score higher on Perry's compassion subscale but also on attraction to policy making. No statistically significant gender differences were found on commitment to public service.     

Controlling Federal Agencies: The Contingent Impact of External Controls on Worker Discretion and Productivity

ABSTRACT

Previous scholarship has investigated why legislatures sometimes choose to delegate policy choice to executive agencies, but there is little research on the consequences of the choice to delegate or not. Using a multiple principal-agent framework, this paper provides empirical evidence regarding the impact of legislative delegation and agency discretion on the work of U.S. government employees. Findings suggest that delegation directly reduces employee discretion only in client service agencies; its direct effects on employee productivity are more evident but varied. Legislative delegation is also associated with more executive political appointees, whose presence reduces both employee discretion and productivity. Whether employees with more discretion are more productive than those with less depends on their commitment to the job: employees who like their work more than their pay use their discretion to enhance productivity, while employees who like their pay more than their work use their discretion to reduce productivity.     

Public Service Motivation Research: Lessons for Practice

Public service motivation research has proliferated in parallel with concerns about how to improve the performance of public service personnel. However, scholarship does not always inform management and leadership. This article purposefully reviews public service motivation research since 2008 to determine the extent to which researchers have identified lessons for practice. The results of the investigation support several lessons—among them using public service motivation as a selection tool, facilitating public service motivation through cooperation in the workplace, conveying the significance of the job, and building leadership based on public service values. These results are important because they offer evidence that the field is coalescing around tactics that managers and leaders can use to address enduring concerns about employee motivation in the public sector. They also prompt us to articulate ideas that can guide a tighter integration of research and practice moving forward.     

Motivational Bases and Emotional Labor: Assessing the Impact of Public Service Motivation

Emotional labor has become an important topic in the study of organizational behavior, but no research has examined how it is affected in individuals’ motivational bases. Public administration scholars have started to study this concept, but empirical studies are still in their infancy. Focusing on a particular type of motivational base—public service motivation (PSM), this article assesses how PSM and its three dimensions (attraction to policy making, commitment to public interest, and compassion) affect two common emotional labor activities (surface acting and deep acting). Using data from a survey of certified public management students, the results show that PSM is negatively associated with surface acting and positively associated with deep acting. Among the PSM dimensions, attraction to policy making is positively associated with surface acting; compassion is negatively associated with surface acting and positively associated with deep acting; and commitment to public interest is not associated with surface acting or deep acting.     

Leadership and Meaningful Work in the Public Sector

There have been many important studies on leadership in the public administration discipline; however, scholarly inquiry still lags behind related disciplines such as psychology and business administration. This article helps fill that gap by analyzing the role that public leaders play in making work more meaningful for their employees, which, in turn, has a positive influence on employee job outcomes. Specifically, the authors analyze the mediating role of work meaningfulness in the relationships between leader‐member exchange and organizational commitment, work effort, and work‐to‐family enrichment. Samples from education, health care, and local government are used. Results show that leadership strongly influences work meaningfulness, which, in turn, influences job outcomes. In addition, the impact and extent of leadership and work meaningfulness are higher in health care and education than in local government. The results emphasize the importance of leadership and meaningful work in the public sector.     

A Review of: “Corruption by Design: Building Clean Government in Mainland China and Hong Kong by Melanie Manion”

ABSTRACT

The impact of privatization on public service quality is an enduring issue in public policy and management. Advocates of privatization suggest that market forces prompt private firms to provide better quality services, while opponents point towards the potential for quality to be traded off against profits. Drawing on incomplete contract and capability theories, we explore a more nuanced possibility: that private providers of public services perform better on dimensions of public service quality that are easier to measure and monitor, and vice versa. Using panel data on service quality in prisons in England and Wales in the period 1998 to 2012, we find that privately managed prisons do perform better on dimensions of quality, such as confinement conditions and prisoner activity, which are more easily measured, whereas public prisons perform better on dimensions of quality, such as levels of order and prisoner safety, which are less easily measured and managed.     

Workplace Bullying Policy in the Australian Public Sector: Why Has Gender Been Ignored?

This article examines the question of gender-neutral workplace bullying policy in the Australian context. It draws on the international workplace bullying literature and interview data gathered from policy actors located in Australian public service administrations, including managers, policy implementors and employee advocates. Our findings show that both the literature and the policy actors tend to present workplace bullying as a product of individualised behaviour, overlooking the nuances and dimensions of organisational power relations that include gender. As part of this tendency, policy actors insisted that workplace bullying be represented as gender-neutral. Our analysis reveals two key factors underpinning the defence and dissemination of workplace bullying as a gender-neutral problem: the tendency to individualistic remedies in public sector policies; and the idea among policy actors that if workplace bullying was portrayed as needing gender analysis, its current support as an important organisational issue would dissolve.     

High‐Performance Human Resource Practices and Employee Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Public Service Motivation

This article responds to recent calls for research examining the mechanisms through which high‐performance human resource practices (HPHRPs) affect employee outcomes. Using the theoretical lens of social exchange and process theories, the authors examine one such mechanism, public service motivation, through which HPHRPs influence employees’ affective commitment and organizational citizenship behaviors in public sector organizations. A sample of professionals in the Egyptian health and higher education sectors was used to test a partial mediation model using structural equation modeling. Findings show that public service motivation partially mediated the relationship between HPHRPs and employees’ affective commitment and organizational citizenship behaviors. Similar results were achieved when the system of HPHRPs was disaggregated to consider the individual effects of five human resource practices.