The motivational bases of public service: foundations for a third wave of research

Abstract

Research on public service motivation has garnered significant attention from scholars, especially in the last two decades. This article divides the evolution of the research into three waves: definition and measurement; assessing and confirming construct validity and diffusion of the construct; and learning from past research and filling shortcomings and gaps. Significant contributions and benchmarks of the first two waves are identified. Four foundational activities are discussed that are present and will be important for advancing public service motivation research during the third wave. Some aspects of the research in the Asia Pacific region are highlighted.

Keywords:

• public service motivation
• research designs
• construct reliability
• multiple incentives

Notes

1. The immediate trigger for Rainey’s study was an earlier public–private comparative study by Buchanan (1975), which arrived at conclusions at odds with Rainey’s view of public service.

2. The four items are: I admire people who initiate or are involved in activities to aid my community; It is important to contribute to activities that tackle social problems; Meaningful public service is very important to me; and It is important for me to contribute to the common good.

3. Combining wages and deferred compensation into a single, total compensation category helps to simplify the typology. A practice common in government has been to hold current compensation down and provide more generous deferred compensation. The global movement to control government costs, however, has begun to change compensation practices, and traditional relationships between current and deferred compensation are evolving. Whether compensation is accurately represented as a single incentive or is better represented as multiple incentives is an empirical question. It is important to bear in mind that the total compensation category is used here to simplify the typology and may need to be disaggregated based on evidence.

4. No studies have looked simultaneously at the three incentives in Table 1.

5. The 15 countries included in the analysis were the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Russia, Israel, Japan, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand.