A systematic review of the link between public service motivation and ethical outcomes

ABSTRACT

Preventing unethical behaviour is a concern across cultures and is important for sustaining integrity and stakeholder trust in governance regimes. Encouraging self-regulation of ethical behaviour and accountability of public sector personnel has attracted multidisciplinary attention. A large body of literature has examined the link between public service motivation (PSM) and public personnel’s enactments of various ethics-related behaviours. Scholars disagree, however, about whether PSM is significantly associated with ethics-related outcomes. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, we conducted a systematic literature review of 59 articles focusing on the PSM-ethics linkage to provide an integrated summary of how PSM affects ethical outcomes. We conclude that the empirical evidence addressing the PSM-ethics linkage is growing, but the mechanisms by which PSM influences ethical behaviour are not yet clear. In this article, we use prosocial organisational behaviour (POB) model to explain how PSM can influence ethical outcomes for public sector employees based upon our systematic literature review.

KEYWORDS:

• ethical behaviour
• public service motivation
• systematic review
• prosocial organisational behaviour model
• whistleblowing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Euipyo Lee

Euipyo Lee is a Ph.D. candidate at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington. His research interests include public management, focusing particularly on public sector innovation, organisational behaviour, representative bureaucracy, and policing.

Tinganxu Lewis-Liu

Tinganxu Lewis-Liu is an associate director analysis at Eli Lilly and Company. Her research interests include performance management, corruption, and state-individual interaction centred on fostering transparent government. She uses experimental design, structural equation modelling, meta-analysis, econometric and psychometrics in her studies.

Shaun Khurana

Shaun Khurana is a Ph.D. in Public Affairs student at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington. His research interests include public and nonprofit accountability, administrative burden, and co-production.

Ming Lu

Ming Lu is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of International Studies, Renmin University of China. Her research interests include environmental politics, international politics, political communication, and political psychology.