Only When We Agree! How Value Congruence Moderates the Impact of Goal‐Oriented Leadership on Public Service Motivation

• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Author: Ulrich Thy Jensen,Lotte Bøgh Andersen,Christian Bøtcher Jacobsen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13008
• Date: 01 January 2019

12 Public Administration Review • Janua ry | F ebru ary 20 19

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 79, Iss. 1, pp. 12–24. © 2018 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13008.

Ulrich Thy Jensen

Arizona State University

Lotte Bøgh Andersen

Aarhus University

Christian Bøtcher Jacobsen

Aarhus University

Only When We Agree! How Value Congruence

Moderates the Impact of Goal-Oriented Leadership on

Public Service Motivation

Abstract: Questions of how and when managers can motivate the workforce of public organizations are fundamental

for scholars and practitioners alike. A dominant assertion is that goal-oriented leadership strategies, such as

transformational leadership, foster public service motivation (PSM). However, existing studies rely on designs that are

vulnerable to endogeneity and rarely investigate the scope conditions of the leadership-PSM relationship. Combining

a field experiment with 364 managers and surveys of their 3,470 employees, the authors show that transformational

leadership and transactional leadership, when induced experimentally, do not have the claimed positive effect on

PSM. In fact, the results indicate that goal-oriented leadership can have demotivating effects when employee and

organizational values are incongruent. Public managers should therefore carefully assess existing levels of value (in)

congruence before implementing goal-oriented leadership strategies, and—in case of value conflicts—seek to align

perceptions of the desirable among members of the organization.

Evidence for Practice

• Work motivation is the energy a person is willing to invest in his or her job to achieve certain objectives;

values are conceptions of what is desirable to achieve.

• Stimulating work motivation may be of little contribution to organizational performance, if employees

expend their energy on objectives that are not aligned with organizational goals.

• Goal-oriented leadership can—at worst—have a demotivating effect on individuals’ public service motivation

if employee and organizational values are incongruent.

• To reap the benefits of goal-oriented leadership, it is important to carefully assess existing value conflicts and

align conceptions of the desirable among members of the organization.

How public managers can increase employees’

motivation is an important research question

and a practical challenge (Park and Rainey

2008). In recent years, scholarly attention has centered

on the concept of transformational leadership, which

is argued to stimulate employees’ public service

motivation (PSM) through leadership behaviors such

as articulating a vision that appeals to employees’

higher-order needs (Paarlberg and Lavigna 2010;

Wright, Moynihan, and Pandey 2012). This focus is

warranted, because PSM has been linked to behavioral

dispositions of public service providers (e.g., Jensen

and Vestergaard 2017) and the performance of

public organizations (e.g., Andersen, Heinesen, and

Pedersen 2014). Existing studies have, by and large,

corroborated this assertion, demonstrating positive

correlations between transformational leadership and

PSM (Caillier 2014b; Jensen and Bro 2018; Park

and Rainey 2008; Wright, Moynihan, and Pandey

2012). While studies thus far have made great strides

in starting to explore the relationship between

transformational leadership and PSM and started to

map its relation to other important organizational

outcomes, three critical issues remain unsolved.

First, and in line with calls for greater attention to

context (O’Toole and Meier 2014), core contextual

factors of the leadership-motivation nexus remain

unexplored. As noted by Paarlberg and Perry

(2007), employees are likely to be motivated by

organizational goals to the extent that those goals

fall within employees’ “zone of existing values.” If

values match, employees are more likely to derive

motivation from the organization’s mission. If values

do not match, management interventions may be

necessary (Besley and Ghatak 2005). However, the

effect of managerial initiatives may also depend on

the initial value congruence. In a cross-sectional study,

Krogsgaard, Thomsen, and Andersen (2014) find

that transformational leadership is positively related

to PSM only if employee and organizational values

match. Contrary to the common claim, this indicates

that goal-oriented leadership strategies do not always

increase PSM and challenges the optimistic view

Christian Bøtcher Jacobsen is

associate professor in the Department

of Political Science at Aarhus University,

Denmark. His research focuses on

leadership, motivation, and performance in

public organizations.

E-mail: ChristianJ@ps.au.dk

Lotte Bøgh Andersen is professor

in the Department of Political Science at

Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research

interests include leadership, motivation,

behavior, and performance of public

employees; she also has contributed to

research concerning economic incentives

and motivation crowding theory. She is

director of Crown Prince Frederik Center for

Public Leadership.

E-mail: lotte@ps.au.dk

Ulrich Thy Jensen is assistant professor

in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona

State University. His research spans domains

of leadership and organizational behavior.

His recent contributions focus on work

motivation and values among public service

providers and on how leadership behaviors

shape attitudinal and performance

outcomes in public organizations.

E-mail: ujensen@asu.edu

Research Article