Comparing public service motivation within various Europe countries: do institutional environments make a difference ? Paper

The motivation of public servants in general (Behn 1995), and public service motivation (PSM) in particular (Perry and Hondeghem 2008b), have always been important issues in public administration and public management research. In recent years, research on public service motivation has made significant progress, finally living up to the status it has been attributed (Perry and Hondeghem 2008a). Whereas public service motivation research always has been focused on public service as an independent variable, trying to explain its consequences, some recent empirical and theoretical research has been more aimed at unveiling origins of public service motivation (Perry, 1997; Perry 2000; Vandenabeele 2007; Perry and Vandenabeele 2008; Vandenabeele 2008a; Moynihan and Pandey 2007; DeHart- Davis et al 2006; Camilleri 2007)

Putting Public Service Motivation into Context. A Balance Between Universalism and Particularism

Research on Public Service Motivation (PSM) has increased enormously in the last 20 years. Besides the analysis of the antecedents of PSM and its impact on organizations and individuals, many open questions about the nature of PSM itself still remain. This article argues that the theoretical construct of PSM should be contextualized by integrating the political and administrative contexts of public servants when investigating their specific attitudes towards working in a public environment. It also challenges the efficacy of the classic four-dimensional structure of PSM when it is applied to a specific context. The findings of a confirmatory factor analysis from a dataset of 3754 employees of 279 Swiss municipalities support the appropriateness of contextualizing parts of the PSM construct. They also support the addition of an extra dimension called, according to previous research, Swiss democratic governance. With regard to our results, there is a need for further PSM research to set a definite measure of PSM, particularly in regard to the international diffusion of empirical research on PSM.Points for practitionersThis study shows that public service motivation is a relevant construct for practitioners and may be used to better assess whether public agents are motivated by values or not. Nevertheless, it stresses also that the measurement of PSM must be adapted to the institutional context as well. Public managers interested in understanding better the degree to which their employees are motivated by public values must be aware that the measurement of this PSM construct has to be contextualized. In other words, PSM is also a function of the institutional environment in which organizations operate