Establishing A Mission-Based Culture: Analyzing the Relation Between Intra-Organizational Socialization Agents, Mission Valence, Public Service Motivation, Goal Clarity and Work Impact

ABSTRACT

This study contributes to our understanding of how organizations can craft a mission-based culture by examining the relationship between mission valence, PSM, goal clarity, and work impact. More specifically, the study assesses how value-laden communication with multiple intra-organizational socialization referents is related with the cited variables. The developed hypotheses are tested using structural equation modelling and a sample of 585 non-managerial employees employed by a public welfare organization. The findings confirm the claim that position in an organizational hierarchy is not likely to influence the analyzed relationships. The magnitude of the relationships, however, diverges. In contrast to previous research, the study results indicate that, in the case of lower-level employees, PSM is the most powerful predictor of mission valence. Furthermore, the results indicate that exposure to organizational values via interaction with internal socialization agents is positively related with their perceived importance. The results thus not only confirm the relevance of incorporating the institutional setting when analyzing mission valence, but also provide further proof for an institutional theory of PSM by highlighting that different organizational socialization agents could play a distinctive role in crafting PSM and a mission-based culture.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sebastian Desmidt

Sebastian Desmidt ([email protected]) is an associate professor in strategic management at Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration. His research focuses, from a behavioral perspective, on the effectiveness of strategic management instruments and strategic planning processes, the determinants of strategic consensus, and the motivational power of mission valence in public and non-profit organizations.

Anita Prinzie

Anita Prinzie ([email protected]) specializes in data science and, more specifically, supporting marketing and managerial decision making through big data analytics. She received her PhD in Applied Business Economics at Ghent University and worked for several years as a senior researcher at Manchester Business School and Ghent University. She is a quantitative methodological pluralist whose competencies include, amongst others, SEM, discriminant analysis, GLM, cluster analysis, SVM, neural networks, Random Forests, and Markov models.