Motivating and Retaining Government Employees: The Role of Organizational Social Capital

ABSTRACT

While a great deal of attention has been given to the role of performance pay and extrinsic rewards in understanding how to motivate and retain employees, this study points towards the importance of organizational social capital, defined as the sum of collaboration, trust, and value congruence among employees. Using a four-year panel data set of 170 federal agencies, we find a positive effect of social capital on intrinsic motivation but contradicting effects on turnover. Changes in social capital across time mitigate turnover intention but are unrelated to turnover behavior. A cross-sectional analysis shows, however, that the relationship between social capital and turnover behavior is curvilinear and has an inverted u-shape. The findings suggest that social capital can be a double-edged sword, as it is harmful in lower doses but beneficial if a critical mass of employees can participate in the social network, thereby avoiding conflict-laden in- and out-group constellations.

Notes

For an overview of all Viewpoint surveys and related publications, see the OPM website: https://www.fedview.opm.gov/ (retrieved on 9/20/2017).

In order to avoid any misunderstandings related to the issue of ecological fallacies, we want to emphasize that our unit of analysis and interpretation is the organization (“agency”), not the individual.

From here on, we use the term “agency” when referring to our sample, which mainly consists of sub-agencies and a few main agencies. Originally, our data set contained a total of 282 agencies, but due to missing values this number has been reduced to 170 (171, respectively) agencies that are usable for our multivariate analysis. We did not include data from survey waves prior to 2010 because one of the two items we use to measure the structural dimension of social capital was not included in the 2004, 2006, and 2008 editions of the survey. We also did not include data past 2013 because these data were not available at the time this article was written.

We see additional support for these findings when plotting the marginal effects of social capital on the turnover rate for different values of social capital, rather than the predicted values as in Figure 1. Here, the marginal effect is significantly positive when social capital is more than 1.6 standard deviations below its mean and significantly negative when it is more than 0.7 standard deviations above the mean.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexander Kroll

Alexander Kroll ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of public administration at the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University. His research interest is in the management of public organizations. In particular, he studies the functions and dysfunctions of performance systems and the role of organizational behavior in improving public services.

Michele Tantardini

Michele Tantardini ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of public administration at the School of Public Affairs at Penn State Harrisburg. He received his Ph.D. in public affairs at the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs, Florida International University. His current research examines effects of organizational social capital on performance information use in public organizations. He also is interested in public service motivation and public financial management.