Work motivation in the Hellenic extended public sector: an empirical investigation

Abstract

Individual differences and work-context characteristics may lead to differences in employees' motivation, job satisfaction and performance. In an era when public organizations seek to attract and retain highly qualified employees, managers and designers of motivation systems should carefully scrutinize and evaluate the reward preferences of their personnel. Using descriptive statistics and ordered probit regression models on data from a unique questionnaire-based survey, we explore how individuals' demographic characteristics and organizational work environments influence work motivation in the extended public sector of Greece. Literature on work motivation has long been focused into two major approaches: the organizational economic approach – focusing on extrinsic rewards; and the organizational behaviour approach – emphasizing intrinsic motivation. Accordingly, the motivators addressed in this study are presented in the form of extrinsic and intrinsic incentives. Our findings show that the expected work outcome of public employees is directly influenced by a multifaceted context of motivators; however extrinsic rewards seem to exert stronger influence on employees' preferences than intrinsic motives, including those related to public and altruistic service. In addition, econometric results indicate that individual characteristics comprise a more decisive set of factors in determining the motivation patterns of public employees compared to work-related influences.

Keywords:

• extended public sector
• extrinsic motivation
• Greece
• intrinsic motivation
• work performance

Notes

1. Data for this study were collected as part of a larger scale survey investigating the motivation preferences of employees in Greece. In this article, we explore how public employees conceive the impact of specific motivators on their individual performance. The other core part of this research refers to the actual motivators offered to public servants, the relationship between motivation and organizational performance and the perceptions of public employees concerning the motivators that should be imposed by public management in order to maximize organizational performance.

2. In the following sections we use these two terms interchangeably.

3. The operationalization of motivation items was also included in the questionnaire.

4. We would like all the participants of the survey to have completed a minimum of 2 years in the organization. That was a prerequisite in order to distinguish between permanent and seasonal employees.

5. To ensure validity, inter-rater reliability by a follow-up telephone conversation with 20 respondents employed in PPC was carried out. The results demonstrated a high consistency with original answers (test-retest 0.86). To examine potential non-response bias we compared respondents and the population on two variables; gender and prior working experience in the private sector. None of these t-tests for differences between the sample and the population means was statistically significant at the level of 0.10.

6. What is observed from the regressions is that overall (pseudo) R square values are higher compared with similar studies that have also used ordered probit models (e.g. Lewis and Frank 2002; Manolopoulos 2006).