A spirit of service to the community: public service motivation in the New Zealand public service

A “spirit of service to the community” has been the foundation of recent reforms in New Zealand public administration. New Zealand’s renewed interest in public service motivation is notable as it occurs in the jurisdiction most closely associated with New Public Management in the 1980s and ‘90s. This essay documents the passage of a spirit of service to the community through legislation, and the initial steps that the New Zealand public service has taken to support a spirit of service into fullest expression.

Legislative history of a spirit of service to the community

While public administration theory has “long emphasised the distinctive character and motives associated with public institutions” (Perry, 1997, p. 181), the phrase “public service motivation” did not appear in the literature until 1982 (Rainey, 1982). In New Zealand, the term “a spirit of service to the community” has been preferred and included in the core legislation of the public service since 1962 (Scott & Macaulay, 2020).

The State Sector Act 1962 was given the long title: “An Act to provide for the appointment of a State Services Commission, to assist in promoting the efficiency of the State services in the performance of their duties, and in respect of the Public Service to ensure that their members are impartially selected, fairly remunerated, administratively competent, and imbued with the spirit of service to the community” (emphasis added). The latter part of this long title appears to be inspired by an earlier text by Edgar Gladden (1945, p. 15), who described the core requirements of a civil service are that it be “impartially selected, administratively competent, politically neutral, and imbued with a spirit of service to the community”.

This legislation was repealed and replaced by the State Sector Act 1988, which included in its purpose statement: “The purpose of this Act is to promote and uphold a State sector system that … is imbued with the spirit of service to the community”. This appeal to altruism appears in contrast to the assumptions of rational self-interest that permeate that Act. New Zealand in the 1980s faced a series of fiscal crises that led the Government to conclude radical reform was required to improve the performance and affordability of the public service (Boston et al., 1996). These reforms were informed by new institutional economics and particularly the work of O.E. Williamson (Gorringe & Scott, 1989). These economic theories applied assumptions of rational self-interest, commonly applied to market transactions in the private sector, to the behaviour of public servants.

Under what became known as “the New Zealand model” (Boston et al., 1996), public servants were given autonomy to configure departments as they wanted in exchange for being held accountable for the quantity and quality of outputs they would produce. These reforms have been associated with a group of related reforms occurring in jurisdictions around the world known as New Public Management, although New Zealand was described as going “further and faster” (Kettl, 1997, p. 446) than other countries.

In 2020, the core legislation of the New Zealand public service was repealed and replaced again, this time with the Public Service Act 2020. The Public Service Act states that “the fundamental characteristic of the public service is acting with a spirit of service to the community”. This elevates a spirit of service to the community from being one of many purposes in the State Sector Act 1988 to being the fundamental purpose, giving the clause additional prominence. Further, the law requires that administrative heads of departments “must preserve, protect, and nurture the spirit of service to the community that public service employees bring to their work”. Thus, for the first time, a spirit of service was not merely an aspiration or description of the public service, but was also associated with instrumental duties of individual leaders (Scott & Merton, 2023; Scott et al., 2020). Initially, it had been proposed that leaders be responsible for imbuing public servants with a spirit of service, but officials challenged this idea, contending that public servants joined the public service because of their existing spirit of service to the community, and so instead it was the job of leaders to preserve, protect, and nurture this existing spirit (Hughes, 2022).

A spirit of service to the community and public service motivation

None of the laws mentioned above actually define a spirit of service, though we can make some inferences based on context. The Public Service Act 2020 states that a spirit of service to the community is the fundamental characteristic of public service – this suggests a descriptive term for something that is unique to or more prevalent in public servants. This inferred definition is comparable to the definition for public service motivation offered by Perry and Wise (1990, p. 368): “an individual’s predisposition to respond to motives grounded primarily or uniquely in public institutions and organisations”.

What then are these motivations? In 2017, a conference was held of the senior leaders across the public service, and each was asked to explain their own “spirit of service to the community”. The responses were varied but were summarised as “putting the needs of others first”, “having a higher purpose”, and “acting with humility” (Hughes, 2019). These overlap with the four components of public service motivation explored by Perry (1996): attraction to public policy making, civic duty/commitment to the public interest, compassion, and self-sacrifice; and refined by Kim et al. (2013): attraction to public participation, commitment to public values, compassion, and self-sacrifice.

A boundary object for creating a unified public service

While a spirit of service is interpreted by the Public Service Commission as containing three core motives, that is, putting citizens first, higher purpose, and humility, it is also acknowledged that a spirit of service differs between individuals, described as “the reason a teacher becomes a teacher, or a social worker becomes a social worker, or a police officer becomes a police officer” (Scott, 2020). A spirit of service to the community is therefore perhaps best understood as a “boundary object” (Scott, 2019; Star & Griesemer, 1989) – a concept that has plasticity of meaning to allow different interpretations while allowing sufficient commonality to form the basis of agreement. Boundary objects benefit from their plasticity, as too much definition reveals divisions and disagreements (Scott et al., 2016).

The Cabinet paper that proposed the spirit of service clause in the Public Service Act 2020 was titled “unified public service” (Hipkins, 2019), because it described the shared symbols and values of public service that would strengthen the common social identity of public servants (Scott & Macaulay, 2020). Organisational/sectoral identification is in turn associated with higher levels of public service motivation (Miao et al., 2019).

Preserving, protecting, and nurturing – practices for supporting a spirit of service to the community

A spirit of service to the community has been aligned to the indigenous Māori concept “te hāpai hapori” (service to the community). Service has been described by several Māori authors as an important aspect of Māori culture (Brannelly et al., 2013; Mead, 2003) as part of a continual tradition that extends backwards far beyond the introduction of the phrase “a spirit of service to the community” in the State Services Act 1962. Efforts to preserve, protect and nurture a spirit of service are carried out under the bilingual banner “a spirit of service to the community | te hāpai hapori”.

Since 2016, speeches and communication from the Public Service Commission have emphasised a spirit of service to the community (Scott, 2019). Our experience is that this has resulted in an enormous outpouring of emotion by public servants. For many years, New Zealand public servants had been accustomed to hearing their roles described in terms of extrinsic incentives. The simple act of acknowledging that public servants may be motivated by altruism, self-sacrifice, or a desire to make a difference, seems to have reawakened an excitement about the notion of service.

Following from the first step of acknowledging the spirit of service to the community that public servants bring to their work, the second step taken in New Zealand was to select leaders who demonstrated a spirit of service to the community. In New Zealand, the Public Service Commissioner appoints the chief executives of public service departments. From 2016, candidates for chief executive roles were expected to demonstrate their commitment to service. Successful candidates were expected to do the same when appointing their own leadership teams. Several studies highlight the importance of selection for public service motivation (Christensen et al., 2017), and leaders have a disproportionate effect on organisational culture (Perry, 2021).

Since 2019, the public service awards and recognition programme has been reoriented around service. Te hāpai hapori awards don’t go to the people with the greatest career advancement, but instead to the public servants who best demonstrated a spirit of service. One of the first public servants celebrated with these awards was a frontline corrections officer who had dedicated 30 years of her life to transforming the lives of prisoners (Public Service Commission, 2019). These stories appear to be important in building excitement and pride in service, even among those in roles without direct contact with beneficiaries (see Perry, 2021, for more on the role of storytelling in supporting public service motivation).

Senior leaders have regularly been asked to reflect on their own spirit of service (see Bellé, 2013, for more on the effects of self-persuasion on public service motivation). Attendees at the 2017 Leaders Summit were asked to reflect on and then describe the moment when they understood what it meant to be a public servant. At the 2018 summit, leaders were asked to reflect on and describe a moment when they nurtured a spirit of service in others. A spirit of service to the community continues to form a major component of New Zealand's public service discourse.

Where to from here?

Motivation crowding theory suggests that characterising public servants as rational self-maximisers and managing their behaviour through incentives diminishes the spirit of service to the community for whom public servants work. Our fear was that public service motivation in New Zealand had been irreparably damaged. Our experience suggests that this fear was misplaced (Hughes, 2018). The spirit of service is still alive and can be nurtured into fuller expression.

It will be important that New Zealand doesn’t exchange one simplistic view of human motivation (rational self-maximisation) for another (selfless service). A spirit of service is insufficient as a motivational system because individual conceptions of public interest differ (Prebble, 2018), and other shared values of professionalism, neutrality, and integrity remain necessary; the Public Service Act 2020 also enshrines traditional principles and values that bound public servant behaviour (Scott & Merton, 2023). In addition, while a recent survey of public servants (Public Service Commission, 2021) reveals that a spirit of service is highly prevalent, rare bad actors still exist, and controls are needed to ensure that minimum standards of integrity are maintained. Our next steps are to build a more complete toolkit to support public service leaders to preserve, protect and nurture the spirit of service to the community (Scott, 2023), and further inculcate a values-based public service.

Disclosure statement

The first author is an employee, and the second author is a statutory officer of the New Zealand public service. However, the views expressed in this document are the authors' own and do not necessarily represent the views of the New Zealand government.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rodney Scott

Rodney Scott is an Adjunct Professor of Public Administration at the University of New South Wales, Kaitohutohu Mātāmua/Chief Policy Advisor for the Public Service Commission of New Zealand, and an affiliated researcher with the Bennett Institute of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. He has contributed to public policy and legislation since 2008, including New Zealand’s Public Service Act 2020, and written books on collaboration, goal commitment, system dynamics, and institutional memory.

Peter Hughes

Peter Hughes is Te Tumu Whakarae mō Te Kawa Mataaho | Public Service Commissioner and Head of the New Zealand Public Service. Prior roles include Chief Executive of the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Social Development, Department of Internal Affairs, and Health Funding Authority; and Professor of Public Management and Head of the School of Government at Victoria University of Wellington. He was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the State.