Does public service motivation foster justification of unethical behavior? Evidence from survey research among citizens

Abstract

A recent thread in public administration research suggests that public service motivation (PSM) may have a dark side. However, empirical research supporting this assumption remains scarce. In this study, we build on and combine previous theoretical studies on the relationship between PSM and (im)morality. In particular, we test whether highly public-service motivated individuals vary their justification of an unethical behavior when the value advanced by this behavior safeguards or puts at risk their interpretation of the public interest. The research design combines two vignettes and various survey questions. Using a sample of more than 1500 citizens in Catalonia (Spain), we provide initial support for a dark side of PSM: justification of unethical behavior. The results for vignette A confirm our hypotheses, while the results for vignette B are insignificant. The discussion addresses the different findings, and provides directions for future research.

Acknowledgments

This work would not have been possible without the helpful comments and criticisms of the anonymous reviewers and editors.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Ethical and moral are seen as synonyms in this study.

2 Institutions are defined according to Peters (2000).

3 This definition comes from the public values tradition (Bozeman 2007; Jørgensen and Bozeman 2007), which aims to study how public managers, politicians, citizens, and organizations define, identify and serve public values (Fukumoto and Bozeman 2019). The values pluralism, which inherent to this tradition, is well suited for the purposes of this article.

4 ANOVA tests indicated that the treatment of this experiment did not affect the dependent variable. Justification of unethical behavior in vignette A (F(1, 1510) = 0.04, p = 0.842) and B (F(1, 1510) = 0.04, p = 0.845) did not significantly differ across the two treatment groups.

5 Accusations and convictions because of corruption are common in the two main political parties of Spain: PP (e.g., Gürtel) and PSOE (e.g., ERTES). In Catalonia this is also the case, CiU (now PDeCAT), or the main ruling party of Catalonia for over 30 years, was convicted for illegal financing in 2018 (3% issue). This makes it a good scenario in which to run our experiment as we confront respondents with situations they have lived or at least heard and read of.

6 To identify high or low levels of our variables of interest, we used the following criteria: high = percentile 90, low = percentile 10. To check the robustness of our analyses we repeated the pairwise comparison tests of the predicted margins for different specifications (e.g., high = percentile 95, low = percentile 5, high = maximum, low = minimum). The results (available upon request) remain unaffected.

Additional information

Funding

This article was funded by a project of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spain) on Public Service Motivation, Objective Performance and Citizen Satisfaction (CSO2017-86,653-P).

Notes on contributors

Guillem Ripoll

Guillem Ripoll is an Assistant Professor at the University of Navarra, Spain. He obtained his PhD at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Programme: Politics, Policies and International Relations). His research revolves around the expansion of the concept of public service motivation; specifically, he investigates the relationship between motivation and ethics.

Carina Schott

Carina Schott is an assistant professor at the Utrecht University School of Governance (USG). She conducts research in the field of Public Management at the individual level. Specifically, her research concerns the motivation and decision-making processes of public servants and the implications of a changing work environment on the nature of their work. In her work she applies and combines qualitative and quantitative methods but she is also interested in theory building.