Are Highly Public Service–Motivated Individuals Immune to Common Causes of Unethical Behavior? Calibrating the Moderating Role of Group Pressure and Competition for Economic Resources

Abstract

Previous research has neglected the moderating role of the environment in studying the negative effect of public service motivation (PSM) on unethical behavior. This article investigates whether this effect prevails under group pressure and competition for economic resources. Moreover, it assesses whether these moderating effects can be counterbalanced by activating public values. Using a survey experiment on a sample of citizens in Catalonia (Spain), the results suggest that PSM is vulnerable to group pressure and that the proposed activation of public values does little to neutralize this effect. The discussion addresses the findings and provides directions for future research.

Keywords:

• competition
• group pressure
• public service motivation
• public values
• unethical behavior

Ethical approval

This study adheres to the legal requirements of Spain (country in which the data were collected) and the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (the funding agency). In particular, to develop this study, there was no legal requirement to ask the approval of the ethics committees of our universities. Nonetheless, we made an oral consultation to the ethics committee of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and they also stressed that there was no ne need to formally ask for approval.

Notes

1 In this study, ethical and moral are synonymous.

2 Following previous works in PSM (c.f. Vandenabeele, 2007, Ripoll, 2019), we refer to both formal and informal public institutions, using Peters’ (2000) definition of institution.

3 The public interest is defined as follows: “in a particular context, the public interest refers to the outcomes best serving the long-run survival and well-being of a social collective construed as a ‘public’” (Bozeman, 2007, p. 12). This view is suited to the study of PSM and ethics as it may be understood as an ideal that guides attitudes and behaviors, and it is pluralistic.

4 Public values can be related in a variety of ways (Jørgensen & Bozeman, 2007). Two values may be in harmony in a situation and in conflict in another.

5 Violation of randomization might occur when researchers analyze experimental research designs without those who failed the manipulation check (c.f. Aronow et al., 2019). Therefore, we repeated our analyses for the entire sample. Overall, the results are very similar. The main differences of the sample without those who failed the manipulation check are that the significance of the contrast to test hypothesis 1 becomes nonsignificant and that the groups with a higher mean of PSM vary compared to the reduced sample. Please see Supplementary Appendix 2 for the complete results.

6 High or low levels of PSM were identified as follows: high = 90th percentile, low = 10th percentile. To check the robustness of our analyses, we repeated the pairwise comparison tests of the predicted margins for different specifications (e.g., high = 95th percentile, low = 5th percentile, high = maximum, low = minimum). The results (available upon request) remain largely unaffected.

Additional information

Funding

This article was funded by a project of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness on Public Service Motivation, Objective Performance and Citizen Satisfaction (CSO2017-86653-P).

Notes on contributors

Guillem Ripoll

Guillem Ripoll is an Assistant Professor at the University of Navarra. He obtained his PhD at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in July 2019. His research revolves around the expansion of the concept of public service motivation; specifically, he investigates the relationship between motivation and ethics.

Enrique Hernández

Enrique Hernández is an Associate Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona Political Science Department. He completed a PhD in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in October 2016. He is interested in the study of public opinion, democracy, and political behavior. He is the principal investigator of the ERC StG project DEMOTRADEOFF that analyzes democratic tradeoffs and how these might fuel political discontent.

Xavier Ballart

Xavier Ballart is a Full Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Main lines of research are public management, policy and program evaluation, targets and performance measures, public service motivation, and innovation and reform in public administration. He has written reports for, among others, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the European Commission.