Motivated to act and take responsibility – integrating insights from community psychology in PSM research

ABSTRACT

The concept sense of community responsibility (SOC-R) provides useful insights into public service motivation (PSM) research because SOC-R is act-relevant and connected to an identifiable community. A survey sent to 2,463 Danish councilors in multipurpose local governments illustrates how PSM and SOC-R as constructs are highly correlated, but not totally overlapping. SOC-R relates negatively to voluntary retirement but positively to visionary leadership and political influence, indicating that SOC-R is a supplementary motivation to take on responsibility and exercise leadership. The key contribution is thus a better understanding of motivation in public service provision.

KEYWORDS:

• Public Service Motivation
• local Councillors
• sense of community responsibility
• visionary leadership
• political influence

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. Common source bias can be tested by different approaches. Given that we do not have variables that can be assumed to be independent of both PSM and SOC-R, we have checked whether one factor explains too much variance. Harman’s single factor test suggests that common method variance is not a big problem (the first factor only explains 29.8 percent of the variance). The Harman test has been severely criticized and can give false confidence in the results, hence the result of this test should not be given too much weight and needs to be interpreted with caution. The scree plot in the EFA indicates more than one factor, and CFA and the reported chi-square tests also suggest that a one-factor model is a poor fit, even for the PSM and SOC-R items.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the The Danish Independent Research Council 6109-00052.

Notes on contributors

Lene Holm Pedersen

Lene Holm Pedersen is professor in public management at University of Copenhagen, Department of Political Science, and a director of research at The Danish Centre for Social Science Research (VIVE). As a social scientist expert on public policy and management, she conducts research on steering, motivation, and performance in the public sector. email: [email protected]

Lotte Bøgh Andersen

Lotte Bøgh Andersen is professor in the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research interests include leadership, motivation, behaviour, and performance of public employees; she also has contributed to research concerning economic incentives and motivation crowding theory. She is director of Crown Prince Frederik Centre for Public Leadership. email: [email protected]

Nanna Thomsen

Nanna Thomsen is data manager at Crown Prince Frederik Centre for Public Leadership. Her research interests include leadership and motivation in the public sector. email: [email protected]