At their wits’ end? Economic stress, motivation and unethical judgement of public servants

ABSTRACT

Through an interdisciplinary approach, this paper addresses the scarcity of research that assesses economic stressors, public service motivation (PSM), work motivations, and unethical judgement in the public square. We argue that motivations have a direct relationship with the acceptance of unethical behaviour, but that economic stress (defined as financial stress and job insecurity) may influence this relationship both direct and indirectly. Using data from the European Social Survey, we develop a path model to test these hypotheses. We find that PSM and work motivation influence unethical judgements, and perceived economic stressors play an indirect role through their relationship with work motivations. Implications of the findings are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• PSM
• work motivation
• economic stress
• unethical judgement
• ESS

Acknowledgments

This work would not have been possible without the helpful comments and criticisms from the participants of the International Research Society for Public Management 2017 conference, and more specifically without the friendly review of Edmund C. Stazyk.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Sampled countries were: Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

2. Likert-type items were re-scaled to a 0–10 scale for comparability and technical (program engine) purposes. For further details, please contact the authors.

3. According to Kenny (2015) the TLI is a valid indicator for goodness of fit when the RMSEA of the null model is higher than .158. The RMSEA of our null model was .156, which indicates that TLI may not be a valid indicator for our model.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad [CSO2017-86653-P];Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte [FPU 14/06498].

Notes on contributors

Guillem Ripoll

Guillem Ripoll is a PhD Researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Programme: Politics, Policies and International Relations). His research investigates the expansion of the concept of public service motivation; specifically, he investigates the relationship between motivation and ethics.

Jessica Breaugh

Jessica Breaugh is a PhD Researcher at the Hertie School of Governance. Her research interests include the implications of public sector reforms for public management, public service motivation, and work motivation and how organizational changes impact employee outcomes such as job satisfaction and job stress.