Commentary on “Motivational Bases and Emotional Labor: Assessing the Impact of Public Service Motivation”

• Date: 01 March 2012
• Author: Gary VanLandingham
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2011.02540.x
• Published date: 01 March 2012

Assessing the Impact of Public Service Motivation 251

services in order to maximize their ef‌f‌i ciency. Howev-

er, widespread public dissatisfaction with the agencies

that provide public services and high turnover of the

staf‌f who perform this work show that our traditional

management emphasis has been far too narrowly

focused.

 e second part of the management equation—which

recognizes that public services generally are delivered

by actual people to other human beings—is equally

important but far too often ignored in our debates

about government service delivery networks. While

often not recognized by public administration theory,

we really do intrinsically want it both ways. As man-

agers, we seek to standardize operations and insist that

frontline workers adhere to scripts in order to maxi-

mize ef‌f‌i ciency and consistency with procedural rules,

and we often work to further minimize the human

element though techniques such as phone trees or web

applications. Yet, when placed in the role of service

recipients ourselves—say, when trying to resolve a

billing problem with our insurance company—we

want to deal with a real person who expresses sympa-

thy for our situation and is willing and able to work

The article by Chih-Wei Hsieh, Kaifeng Yang,

and Kai-Jo Fu brings new insights to an

issue that promises to have great relevance

to public organizations—how we can best manage

functions that require staf‌f to perform substantial

emotional labor when providing public services.

 ese functions—which can include working

with dif‌f‌i cult clients, performing thankless regula-

tory tasks, and helping people cope with personal

or community disasters—are common in public

services. We expect the public servants who deliver

such services to be both professionally competent

and empathic when interacting with the public.

Unfortunately, the popular caricature of faceless and

uncaring bureaucrats shows that we have a long way

to go in this area.

Much public management theory has addressed the

f‌i rst part of this equation—how to organize and man-

age organizations to achieve professional competence.

We happily have spent the last hundred years (and

more) deconstructing whether and how to organize,

reorganize, measure, politicize, professionalize, right-

size, downsize, outsource, and/or in-source public

Commentary on “Motivational Bases and Emotional Labor:

Assessing the Impact of Public Service Motivation”

Gary VanLandingham

Pew Center on the States

Gary VanLandingham is director of

the Pew Center on the States’ Results First

initiative. Previously, he was director of the

Florida Legislature’s Off‌i ce of Program Policy

Analysis and Government Accountability.

He has held leadership positions with the

National Conference of State Legislatures,

National Legislative Program Evaluation

Society, Southeast Evaluation Association,

and North Florida ASPA Chapter and has

authored publications on performance

budgeting, policy research utilization, and

public management.

E-mail: gvanlandingham@pewtrusts.org

Commentary

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 72, Iss. 2, pp. 251–252. © 2012 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.111/j.1540-6210.2011.02540.x.