Duplicitous Me: Communal Narcissists and Public Service Motivation

• Author: Anne K. Fennimore
• DOI: 10.1177/0091026019900355
• Published date: 01 March 2021
• Date: 01 March 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

900355PPMXXX10.1177/0091026019900355Public Personnel ManagementFennimore
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Public Personnel Management
2021, Vol. 50(1) 25 –55
Duplicitous Me: Communal
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Service Motivation
Anne K. Fennimore1
Abstract
This article explores communal narcissism and a possible dark side of public service
motivation (PSM) in the context of employment sector. Personality psychology
insights are offered to further develop PSM theory and practice from multidisciplinary
angles. PSM is thought to characterize a public service ethic with public and nonprofit
sector employees possessing other-directed, and perhaps communal values, rather
than the self-directed, agentic values characterizing private sector organizations.
However, PSM’s prosocial bias often discounts self-interested and mixed-motive
interests. Unlike agentic narcissism, in which self-aggrandizement is more apparent
to others, in communal narcissism, self-aggrandizement is hidden by a “saint-type
bias” and self-proclaimed other-orientation. As a result, some communal narcissism
traits appear to mimic dimensions of the PSM scale. The results of two studies reveal
that communal narcissism positively associates with PSM. In addition, PSM positively
relates to the nonprofit sector and mediates indirect, positive relationships between
communal narcissism and the nonprofit sector.
Keywords
public service motivation, organizational behavior, communal narcissism, dark triad
Introduction
Rainey (1982) defined motivation for public service as “an individual’s predisposition
to respond to motives grounded uniquely in public institutions” (p. 368), inspiring a
public service motivation (PSM) framework (Perry & Wise, 1990), a scale (Perry,
1996), and two decades of replication and refinement (Harari et al., 2017). Public
1Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA
Corresponding Author:
Anne K. Fennimore, Assistant Director for Marketing and Communications, Charles E. Schmidt College
of Medicine, and Instructor for the School of Public Administration, Florida Atlantic University, 777
Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA.
Email: afennimo@health.fau.edu

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Public Personnel Management 50(1)
servants are thought to differ from private sector employees (Perry & Porter, 1982;
Wittmer, 1991) possessing an “other” orientation, and engaging in self-sacrifice
(Brewer et al., 2000; Brewer & Selden, 1998; Crewson, 1997; Houston, 2000), altru-
ism (Perry, 2010, 2014), and prosocial behavior (Coursey et al., 2008). “Consideration
of another’s needs rather than one’s own” (Piliavin & Charng, 1990, p. 30) and a
“desire to expend effort to benefit other[s]” (Grant, 2008, p. 49) perhaps embody
Perry’s (2010) public service ethic. Furthermore, public service expresses “the notion
of duty as an intense inner commitment to a cause that extends beyond the exigencies
of the moment” (Gawthrop, 1998, p. 74).
In general, researchers have portrayed PSM as a desirable attribute, testing its
relationship (Ritz et al., 2016) with increased commitment to public values,
engagement, and performance (Bellé & Cantarelli, 2012; Brewer & Selden, 1998;
Jensen et al., 2017; Moynihan & Pandey, 2007; Ritz, 2009). However, few studies
suggest that PSM may lead to job stress, value conflicts, resigned satisfaction, or
over-engagement (e.g., Bolino et al., 2013; Bolino & Grant, 2016; Giauque et al.,
2012). In particular, Ritz et al. (2016) asserted that “PSM likely has a dark side”
(p. 422). Using personality psychology insights, this research explores communal
narcissism as a possible dark side of PSM. The duplicitous nature of communal
narcissism might mimic motivation toward public service by providing an outlet
for self-aggrandizement.
Although many administrators possess genuine interest in promoting others’ wel-
fare, some are paradoxically charismatic in their self-sacrifice declarations, but exploit
others to gain public recognition for humanitarian deeds. Furthermore, self-interested
intentions are initially masked from others, eliciting heightened backlash once the
hypocrisy is revealed (Malkin, 2015). Communal narcissism fits the duplicitous per-
sonality described above, often defined as a “saint-type bias” in self-perception
(Paulhus & John, 1998), exaggeration of compassion, commitment to humanitarian-
ism (Gebauer et al., 2012), and “self-sacrificing self-enhancement” (Pincus et al.,
2009) strategies. Research suggests that communal narcissists may be drawn to orga-
nizations with latent religious affiliations more strongly than nonnarcissists (Gebauer
et al., 2013) by fulfilling motives of attachment (Gebauer et al., 2012) and self-
enhancement (Gebauer et al., 2013), necessitating examination of the sectors and/or
occupations that tend to attract these individuals.
The communal narcissism index (CNI) has not been compared with other estab-
lished scales, such as PSM, to measure perceptions of public participation, self-sacri-
fice, compassion for others, or commitment to public values. Therefore, the current
research examines three related research questions. Is the CNI developed by Gebauer
et al. (2012) associated with the PSM scale or its subscales developed by S. Kim et al.
(2013); are PSM, CNI, and employment sector associated; and does PSM mediate
associations between sector and CNI if CNI is not directly related to sector? Personality
traits are potential core antecedents of an individual’s motives in the psychological
literature (Schultheiss & Brunstein, 2010); yet, these influences on PSM are relatively
inchoate in the public administration literature (Van Witteloostuijn et al., 2017). Thus,
a relationship between PSM and CNI is scrutinized with “prosocial” personality

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measures from PSM and malevolent personality research (see Ashton & Lee, 2007;
Kam, 2013; S. H. Kim & Kim, 2016; Van Witteloostuijn et al., 2017) including hon-
esty-humility, self-deceptive enhancement (SDE), and impression management (IM)
scales. In addition, grandiose narcissism encompasses two positively related con-
structs, that is, agentic and communal narcissism (Fatfouta et al., 2017; Gebauer et al.,
2012), thus, controlling one form when examining the other ensures that outcomes of
communal narcissism will not be spuriously caused by agentic narcissism (Paulhus &
Williams, 2002). To determine if PSM is a distinctly public service ethic, and to
explore organizational contexts for CNI, employment sector is compared with PSM
and CNI. Previous research has not associated sector with CNI and the direction
among sector and PSM has been unclear (Houston, 2000; Wright & Christensen,
2010). If PSM and CNI are associated, and PSM relates to specific sectors, PSM may
also mediate a relationship between sector and CNI. A quantitative analysis from two
studies, N = 963 and N = 337, respectively, suggest positive relationships between
PSM and CNI, PSM and the nonprofit sector, and a mediated relationship between
PSM, CNI, and the nonprofit sector.
The current research contributes to PSM literature by presenting a duplicitous per-
sonality associated with PSM’s self-sacrifice, attraction to public participation, and
compassion dimensions, but not commitment to public values. Therefore, examining
individual dispositions relating to public values is recommended. The current research
can also inform practitioners. Specifically, communal narcissists held leadership roles
with supervisory duties and served in protective occupations in Study 2. Understanding
their impact on organizational oversight, discretion, subordinate well-being, and pos-
sible perpetration of “Founder’s Syndrome” is important. Human resource managers
may offset negative behavior by developing consensus-building and power-sharing
models to harmonize communal narcissistic needs for approval, tendencies to employ
IM strategies, and “flexible” empathy propensities.
Theory
PSM
PSM has evolved since Perry and Wise’s (1990) article introducing the concept, first
scale development by Perry (1996), and subsequent empirical and conceptual research
advancing the theory. However, PSM lacks the coherence of a “universal” construct
under one definition and set of measurement criteria (S. Kim et al., 2013), as contex-
tual constraints remain unresolved. Literature gaps pertaining to affective motives like
altruism (Bozeman & Su, 2015), a normative commitment to public values motive
(Anderson et al., 2012), and a general prosocial bias in PSM research (Ritz et al.,
2016) provide the impetus for this research.
Self and mixed-motive interests. Administrators often possess self-oriented or mixed-
motive interests (Downs, 1965). Complex self-interested and altruistic motives
(LeGrand, 2003) and competing ideas of bureaucratic behavior and contextual

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Public Personnel Management 50(1)
factors (Wise, 2004) including discretion may foster statesman-like (Downs, 1965)
behavior, or willful misinterpretation of directives and self-aggrandizement (Mint-
rom & Luetjens, 2017). In addition, desiring public program success can increase
risk-taking and muddle distinctions among self and collective interests (Calhoun,
2004). Such narratives challenge PSM conceptualizations as completely other-ori-
ented, warranting investigation of hubris, and a type of narcissism...