Does Grit Matter to Employees’ Quality of Work Life and Quality of Life? The Case of the Korean Public Sector

• DOI: 10.1177/00910260211012713
• Author: Min Young Kim,Hyo Joo Lee
• Date: 01 March 2022
• Published date: 01 March 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00910260211012713

Public Personnel Management

2022, Vol. 51(1) 97 –124

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/00910260211012713

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Article

Does Grit Matter to Employees’

Quality of Work Life and

Quality of Life? The Case

of the Korean Public Sector

Min Young Kim1 and Hyo Joo Lee2

Abstract

To ensure the quality of the work done in the Korean career civil service system

(which is characterized by stability, such as lifelong job security), the public sector

must use methods to motivate their employees and improve their performance in

the long run. In this study, we propose that grit, as a type of work motivation,

can boost employee well-being (i.e., job satisfaction, job stress) and organizational

outcomes (i.e., organizational commitment, performance). Therefore, the main

objective of this study is to assess the validity of grit among public employees from

a collectivist culture; to this end, we use the 2016 survey of Korean public officials

(N = 2,070). The results are as follows: (a) grit has a direct positive effect on quality

of work life (QWL), (b) QWL can increase employee’s quality of life (QOL), and

(c) professionalism and goal-oriented culture negatively and positively regulate grit

and QWL. We also examined how employee motivation (e.g., grit) can enrich their

QWL and QOL. Altogether, this study supports the argument that human resource

(HR) managers should pay attention to grit. To achieve success, one needs not only

some level of ability but also the zeal and capacity for hard labor, the latter two of

which are considered to constitute grit. Given that, this research targeted grit in the

Korean context—not the Western one—and examined its effects in the Korean

public sector, where conscientiousness is emphasized.

Keywords

grit, quality of work life, quality of life, regression curve analysis

1Division of Public Management Research, Korea Institute of Public Administration, Seoul, Republic of

South Korea

2Graduate School of Governance, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Corresponding Author:

Hyo Joo Lee, Sungkyunkwan University, Humanities and Social Sciences Campus, 25-2,

Seonggyungwan-ro, 03063 Jongno-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Email: ddolmang@skku.edu

1012713PPMXXX10.1177/00910260211012713Public Personnel ManagementKim and Lee

research-article2021

98 Public Personnel Management 51(1)

Introduction

To create and maintain competitive and sustainable public organizations, the public

sector attempts to recruit talented and motivated people in a variety of ways. However,

external environmental factors, such as corruption scandals involving public employ-

ees that damage the public sector’s reputation, along with internal conflicts arising

from differences in interests and opinions, may negatively affect public employees’

work motivation (Ehsan & Ali, 2019). This lack of motivation can have negative con-

sequences in work performance, organizational commitment, quality of work life

(QWL), and quality of life (QOL), as well as increased turnover intention, burnout,

and job stress (e.g., Ferraro et al., 2018; Giauque et al., 2019). To keep public officials

motivated, the Korean public sector provides various types of education and training,

incentives, and improved welfare benefits. However, these variables only have short-

term effects, and they cannot cause long-term improvements in motivation (Choi,

2020). Moreover, to maintain the high quality of the career civil service system, which

provides lifelong job security, public organizations should do their best to motivate

their employees and improve their performance in the long run (Choi, 2020).

Many public management scholars have investigated the ways in which employee

motivation fosters positive work attitudes and increases performance. Recently,

research in social science fields, such as education (e.g., Karlen et al., 2019; Tang

et al., 2019), psychology (e.g., Luthans et al., 2019; Schimschal & Lomas, 2019), and

business (e.g., Dugan et al., 2019; Jordan et al., 2019), has suggested the concept of

“grit”; grit is similar to conscientiousness or courage, and it helps people overcome

their fear of failure to persist at a given task (Lucas et al., 2015) and commit to consis-

tently pursuing their long-term goals (Meriac et al., 2015). In an unstable and turbulent

environment such as the Korean public sector,1 grit is a vital trait for a public employee

to have. Furthermore, employees need to understand what affects their own motivation

so that they can overcome obstacles and ultimately perform well while maintaining

high QOL and QWL. From this perspective, it is meaningful to study grit in the Korean

public sector, as it exists as part of a Confucian culture (a culture with negative impres-

sions of control and hierarchy) that emphasizes conscientiousness, particularly in an

attempt to verify the influence of grit in organizations.

While the existing literature has proposed that grit is a valid measure in American

samples (Duckworth et al., 2009; Eskreis-Winkler et al., 2014), the concept has yet to

be studied outside of Western contexts. As argued by Henrich et al. (2010), one must

exercise caution when generalizing the results of Western empirical studies to non-

Western contexts. Thus, it is important to validate grit using a sample from a collectiv-

ist culture. Hence, the primary objective of this research is to assess the validity of the

effects of grit among Korean public employees.

In addition, because the Korean public sector maintains a generalist personnel sys-

tem, the level of professionalism in Korea’s public sector may be lower than those of

its Western counterparts, which use specialist personnel management. This raises the

question of whether grit is weakened or strengthened by the employees’ level of pro-

fessionalism. An ideal goal-oriented culture provides employees with role identities