Public service motivation

Public service motivation (PSM) is a theorized attribute of government and NGO employees that provides them with a desire to serve the public. The existence and extent of this service ethic have been examined many times in scholarly literature. PSM is important because it explains why some people choose careers in the government and non-profit sectors despite the potential for more financially lucrative careers in the private sector.

Early authors in the field of public administration described differences between public and private employees and concerns over motivating public sector employees.[1] Paul Van Riper described the issue in his 1952 history of the U.S. civil service system.[2] Even Woodrow Wilson's seminal 1882 essay that founded the field of public administration expressed concern over the performance of civil servants.[3] Much of Max Weber's work on bureaucracy focused on similar issues.[1] Kaufman's The Forest Ranger introduced the idea of an organizational culture unique to government employees in the 1960s, which contributed significantly to the field of study.[4]

The concept of public service motivation was formalized in the late 1970s and early 1980s by authors like Buchanan, Mosher, Perry, Porter, and Rainey;[5][6][7][8] and the term was actually coined[9] by Perry and Wise in 1990.[10][11][12] Since then, it has gained international prominence.[13] PSM varies between employees and it is difficult to generalize the motivations of everyone who works in the public sector. With that said, PSM is an important driver in public sector employment.[14]

Crewson predicted that failure to properly understand the motivations of public employees may lead in the short term to poor job performance and in the long term to permanent displacement of public service ethic.[15] Although intrinsic to the individual and determined largely by attitudes acquired prior to public service,[10] PSM is influenced by a variety of extrinsic factors (social, political, institutional etc.) and, in time, those factors may lead to a change of the initial PSM of the individual. If the extrinsic factors that act on the public servant are negative, PSM will influence the behaviour of the individual for a period of time that is smaller than the professional career of that individual. If the extrinsic factors are positive, the PSM can influence the behaviour of the public servant during the entire career. Positive reinforcers, called prosocial motivators, include the “lyricism of the public service”, an “administrative romanticism”, the altruistic wish to serve the community, the state, the nation or even the humankind, and the inner need to identify the personal actions with the public interest.[16] Among the negative motivators are institutionalized values such as routinization of behaviours[17][18] and skepticism about the value of the particular bureaucracy's effectiveness in promoting the public good[10] and the budget maximizing and "empire building" behaviours described by Downs[17] and Niskanen.[19][20]

See also

Notes and references

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Perry, James L.; Hondeghem, Annie (2008). "Editors' Introduction". In Perry, James L. and Hondeghem, Annie. Motivation in public management: The call of public service. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-19-923403-5. citing de Tocqueville, Alexis (1856) L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution and Weber, Max (1922) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.
  2. ↑ Paul P. Van Riper (1958). History of the United States Civil Service. Row, Peterson. Retrieved 14 December 2012.
  3. ↑ Wilson, Woodrow W. (1887). "The Study of Administration". Political Science Quarterly 2 (2): 197–222. JSTOR 2139277.
  4. ↑ Kaufman, Herbert (1960). The Forest Ranger: A study in administrative behavior. Baltimore, Maryland: Resources for the Future. OCLC 421634939., reprinted in 2006 ISBN 978-1-933115-27-6
  5. ↑ Buchanan, Bruce (1975). "Red-Tape and the Service Ethic Some Unexpected Differences Between Public and Private Managers". Administration & Society 6 (4): 423–444. doi:10.1177/009539977500600403.
  6. ↑ Mosher, Frederick C. (1982). Democracy and the Public Service. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-503018-1. Retrieved 14 December 2012.
  7. ↑ Perry, James L.; Porter, Lyman W. (January 1982). "Factors Affecting the Context for Motivation in Public Organizations". The Academy of Management Review 7 (1): 89–98. doi:10.5465/AMR.1982.4285475. JSTOR 257252.
  8. ↑ Rainey, H.G. (1982). "Reward Preferences among Public and Private Managers: In Search of the Service Ethic". The American Review of Public Administration 16 (4): 288–302. doi:10.1177/027507408201600402.
  9. ↑ Perry, James L. and Wise, Lois Recascino (1990). "The motivational bases of public service" (PDF). Public Administration Review 50 (3): 367–373. JSTOR 976618. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2011.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Kelman, Steve (April 2015). "The Lectern: How do we get public servants who want to serve the public?". FCW: The Business of Federal Technology. 1105 Public Sector Media Group. Archived from the original on 21 April 2015.
  11. ↑ Vandenabeele, Wouter (2007). "Toward a public administration theory of public service motivation: An institutional approach". Public Management Review 9 (4): 545–556. doi:10.1080/14719030701726697.
  12. ↑ Perry, James L.; Hondeghem, Anne and Wise, Lois Recascino (2010). "Revisiting the Motivational Bases of Public Service: Twenty Years of Research and an Agenda for the Future". Public Administration Review 70 (5): 681–690. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6210.2010.02196.x.
  13. ↑ Donald F. Kettl (2005). The Global Public Management Revolution. Brookings Institution Press. ISBN 978-0-8157-4919-6. Retrieved 14 December 2012.
  14. ↑ Pandey, Sanjay; Stazyk, Edmund C. (2008). "Antecedents and Correlates of Public Service Motivation". In Perry, James L. and Hondeghem, Annie. Motivation in Public Management: The call of public service. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 101–117. ISBN 978-0-19-923403-5.
  15. ↑ Philip E. Crewson (1997). "Public Service Motivation: Building Empirical Evidence of Incidence and Effect". Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 7 (4): 499–518, page 500.
  16. ↑ Matei, L. and Cornea, I. Catalin (2013). "Organizational context and factors affecting public service motivation". International Journal of Academic Research (IJAR) 5 (2): 44–48, page 47. doi:10.7813/2075-4124.2013/5-2/B.6.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Downs, Anthony (1964), Inside bureaucracy (PDF), Rand Corporation, archived (PDF) from the original on 22 April 2015, later republished in a modifies form in 1967 by Little, Brown and Company.
  18. ↑ Moynihan, Donald P., and Pandey, Sanjay K. (2007). "The role of organizations in fostering public service motivation" (PDF). Public Administration Review 67 (1): 40–53. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6210.2006.00695.x. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 March 2015.
  19. ↑ Niskanen, William A. (1971). Bureaucracy and representative government. Chicago: Aldine (Atherton)., reprinted in 2007 by Aldine Transaction.
  20. ↑ Perry 2008, p. 7