Infusing public service motivation (PSM) throughout the employment relationship: a review of PSM and the human resource management process

Abstract

Employees are essential for the effective delivery of public services. Interest in human resource management (HRM) has increased, yet we still have much to learn about the contextually specific aspects of the HRM process in public and nonprofit organizations—how these functions work, what are model practices, and how practices are shaped by organizational and job contexts in the public service. At the same time, research on public service motivation (PSM) has rapidly expanded to understand the unique drive of individuals to serve the public, but like HRM, there are many debates and questions that remain unanswered. We discuss challenges facing both HRM and PSM research and call for a greater examination of PSM in the context of HRM. We do so by focusing on two aspects of the HRM process – job design and recruitment and selection – to see what lessons we have learned from PSM research to date in these areas and what questions arise with avenues for future research to connect PSM and HRM to inform research and practice. We know HRM matters and we know PSM matters but we know little about whether or how to incorporate PSM into HRM processes, policies, and practices.

Disclosure statement

The authors received no funding for this research and declare no conflicts of interest.

Notes

1 The growth in the volume of research in public service HRM is demonstrated by the growth in the impact factor and rankings of the two journals specifically associated with HRM in the public service, the Review of Public Personnel Administration and Public Personnel Management. That being said, as the HRM process includes so many different components, which can be implemented in federal, state, and local government contexts (along with a variety of nonprofit settings), we still have a lot of work to do really improving our conceptual and practical understanding of how HRM systems work in the public service—including what is different from or could be implemented from the private sector, such as the current stream of research on high performance work systems in the public service (e.g. Gould-Williams 2004, 2007; Mostafa, Gould-Williams, and Bottomley, 2015; Selden and Sowa 2015).

2 When referring to public and nonprofit organizations, the broader and encompassing term of public service will be used.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jaclyn S. Piatak

Jaclyn S. Piatak is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her research examines how organizations interact to deliver public services, how job sector relates to individual outcomes and behaviors, and issues in human resource management, particularly related to employment dynamics and equity and inclusion.

Jessica E. Sowa

Jessica E. Sowa is a Professor in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy & Administration at the University of Delaware. Her research focuses on the management of people in public and nonprofit organizations. She is currently working on a textbook on human resource management for public and nonprofit organizations.

Willow S. Jacobson

Willow S. Jacobson is the Robert W. Bradshaw Jr. Distinguished Professor of public administration and government in the School of Government at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on human resource management and leadership in public organizations. She directs the Local Government Federal Credit Union (LGFCU) Fellows program.

Jasmine McGinnis Johnson

Jasmine McGinnis Johnson is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Public Administration at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Administration at George Washington University. Her research interests include the democratization of philanthropy, the effect of board networks on funding, and human resource issues in nonprofit organizations.