Public Service Motivation: Global Knowledge, Regional Perspective

Public service motivation (PSM) has become firmly established as a core concept of study within public administration in the last three decades (Mussagulova & Van der Wal, 2021; Ritz et al., 2016). Emerging as a counterpoint to the dominant view of self-interested and extrinsically motivated bureaucrats advanced by rational choice theorists, Perry and Wise (1990, p. 368) defined PSM as “an individual’s predisposition to respond to motives grounded primarily or uniquely in public institutions and organizations”.

The PSM measurement scale subsequently developed by Perry (1996) has been tested and refined in hundreds of studies. Scholars have examined the contents of PSM and its antecedents and consequences, using a range of methods from surveys and interviews to experimental designs. The practical significance of PSM research has also been recognised in administrative reform and strategic HR efforts as an impetus for performance, job satisfaction, and well-being (Mussagulova & Van der Wal, 2021; Perry, 2021).

In the past decade, PSM scholarship has expanded and diversified. Scholars have employed an interdisciplinary approach, using theoretical lenses such as self-determination theory (SDT), job demands-resources theory, and prosocial motivation theory, among others. In addition, methodological approaches have broadened from an almost exclusive focus on cross-sectional surveys to include more experimental designs, qualitative efforts, and structured literature reviews (Perry, 2021; Ritz et al., 2016).

Although the field was long dominated by scholars from the US and Western Europe, research is increasingly coming from non-Western settings. In 2015 and 2021, two systematic reviews of non-Western PSM scholarship assessed the state of the field and proposed a research agenda (Mussagulova & Van der Wal, 2021; Van der Wal, 2015). The agenda contained three key areas: (1) cultural values and societal disposition, (2) distribution and interplay between different types of motivators, and (3) relations between PSM, public service ethos, and institutions in developing political economies. These review articles called for a more critical employment of contextual variables as to produce new conceptual elements of PSM; e.g., the relationship between PSM and institutions; as well as more quasi-experimental and experimental designs to establish causality.

In this spirit, this special issue on PSM aims to advance global knowledge by showcasing scholarship in the Asia Pacific region that employs under-utilised perspectives and methods. Indeed, two themes emerge from the four articles included in this special issue. The first theme is the institutional nature of PSM. The second theme is the experimental turn in public administration that aims to better understand behavioural phenomena such as PSM, and verify the causal mechanisms hypothesised in earlier research that relied on analysis of cross-sectional data.

Beyond the individual perspective on PSM

The enduring appeal of PSM lies in its elegance and simplicity – it embodies a belief about the distinctiveness of public service. At the core of this distinctiveness is its other-orientedness as opposed to self-interest; and publicness – the communal nature of institutions and missions pursued in the public sector (Perry, 2021). While the role of institutions in shaping behaviours and values is not new (March & Olsen, 1989), the conversation about the institutional facets of PSM accelerated when Vandenabeele (2007) proposed drawing on institutional theory to understand how PSM transcends individuals. More recently, Perry (2021) and Van Loon and Vandenabeele (2021) brought additional attention to the institutional perspective of PSM.

The experimental turn in public administration and PSM

The second important stream of research in this special issue presents a further step towards methodologically novel ways to explore PSM, especially when it comes to causal mechanisms and behavioural foundations of motivation. The use of experimental methods in the social and behavioural sciences, including public administration, has been on the rise recently, as reflected in the 2022 special issue of this journal that explored experimental research in the Asia Pacific region (Liu et al., 2022). The body of experimental PSM research is steadily growing, promising to open up new opportunities for higher internal and external validity and illuminating causal processes.

The articles in this special issue

This issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration is composed of four articles, which tackle the two important facets of PSM research summarised above. In the first article, “Towards a measure of institutional public service motivation: theoretical underpinnings and propositions for future research”, Jeannette Taylor, Gene Brewer, and Guillem Ripoll approach PSM from an institutional perspective. The second article, “Institutional correlates of public service motivation: family, religion, and high school education”, contributed by Taehee Kim, Kiwhan Kim, and Sangmook Kim, continues the institutional theme. Sean Nicholson-Crotty, Jill Nicholson-Crotty, Danyao Li, and Robert K. Christensen emphasise the experimental perspective in the third article, “Exploring the conditionality of public service motivation: evidence from a priming experiment”. The final article in this special issue, “Serving society vs. the individual user? Experimental evidence on the role of public service motivation in predicting job-task preferences”, authored by Jessica Breaugh, and Guillem Ripoll, concludes the special issue.

The article by Taylor, Brewer, and Ripoll represents a pioneering effort to construct institutional PSM. The authors take the conversation on the institutional foundations of PSM to a new level by laying the groundwork for a fundamentally different approach to PSM measurement that encompasses four pillars: public-service orientation, legitimacy, merit, and support. Several propositions for studying institutional PSM are presented to inform future research in this direction.

The lead article is followed by Kim, Kim and Kim that provides much-needed empirical evidence of the extent to which social institutions play a role in the development of PSM. Their focus is on the impact of family, religion, and school education in South Korea on PSM, using insights from a two-wave survey. The article is a logical follow-up to Taylor et al. in that it asks important questions – where does PSM come from, and how can it be cultivated? The answer is through institutions whose role can be leveraged as early as childhood and adolescence, leaving readers with interesting implications to ponder.

The article by Nicholson-Crotty, Nicholson-Crotty, Li and Christensen is notable for its experimental design in a study of 456 employees in which treatment groups were asked to recall negative or positive interactions with citizens before responding to questions on PSM. Results point to a conditional nature of PSM that can be activated through both positive and negative experiential primes.

The experimental study by Breaugh and Ripoll contributes to the debate on how to distinguish PSM from other types of prosocial motivation. To assess this distinction, the authors conduct a survey experiment of 1512 citizens in Spain to test whether PSM can predict task preferences depending on the extent to which they are oriented to non-identified and identified beneficiaries. The results demonstrate that PSM is mainly oriented to society at large rather than individual users.

The conversation on advancing global PSM knowledge does not stop here. The second special issue that will appear in 2023 will explore PSM as an empirical phenomenon in the Asia Pacific region.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zeger Van der Wal

Zeger Van der Wal is affiliated with Leiden University, the National University of Singapore, and Tsinghua University. He is a globally recognised speaker, researcher, and consultant in the domain of public leadership. Zeger (co)authored over 130 publications, including books, journal articles, and op-ed pieces in magazines and newspapers. Top-tier journals which have published his work include International Public Management Journal, Public Administration Review, Public Administration, Administration & Society, American Review of Public Administration, Public Management Review, and Journal of Business Ethics. His latest book, The 21st Century Public Manager, was published with Bloomsbury in 2017.

Assel Mussagulova

Assel Mussagulova is a Research Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. Her current research focuses on career transitions of Singaporean workers, the main factors contributing to successful career transitions, and policies needed to support the workforce in precarious employment conditions. Assel’s work has been published in Public Administration Review, Review of Public Personnel Administration, Public Administration, Public Administration and Development, Australian Journal of Public Administration, and Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, among others. She is associate editor for social media at Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration.