Organizational Goal Characteristics and Public Duty Motivation in U.S. Federal Agencies

• Date: 01 March 2011
• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X10394404
• Author: Chan Su Jung,Hal G. Rainey
• Published date: 01 March 2011
• Subject Matter: Articles

Review of Public Personnel Administration

31(1) 28 –47

© 2011 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X10394404

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4ROP31110.1177/0734371X10394404Jung and RaineyReview of Public Personnel Administration

1The City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

2The University of Georgia, Athens

Corresponding Author:

Hal G. Rainey, Department of Public Administration and Policy, The University of Georgia,

204 Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA 30602-1615

Email: hgrainey@uga.edu

Organizational Goal

Characteristics and

Public Duty Motivation

in U.S. Federal Agencies

Chan Su Jung1 and Hal G. Rainey2

Abstract

Some authors have claimed that ambiguous goals frustrate public service motivation

(PSM). This study uses data from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s Program

Assessment Rating Tool (PART)1 to develop organizational goal ambiguity measures

for U.S. federal agencies. These measures, from this very separate and independent

source, are then significantly and negatively related to a variable measured by a

questionnaire item on the U.S. Merit System Protection Board’s 2005 Merit Principles

Survey. The item asks respondents about whether they are motivated to do a good

job by their duty as a public employee. Responses on this item appear relevant to

PSM, but because the question does not fully represent more elaborate measures

of PSM, we call the variable as “public duty motivation.” Public duty motivation also

relates significantly and positively to employees’ Merit Principles Survey responses

about the specificity of their job goals and of their agency’s mission, and about job-

goal importance and job-goal commitment.

Keywords

public service motivation, public duty motivation, goal ambiguity, job-goal commitment,

job-goal importance, job-goal specificity, mission specificity

Introduction

As Perry and Wise (1990) formalized the public service motivation (PSM) construct

and defined PSM as “an individual’s predisposition to respond to motives grounded

Jung and Rainey 29

primarily or uniquely in public institutions and organizations” (p. 368), academic interest

in this motivation concept has burgeoned (e.g., Alonso & Lewis, 2001; Brewer, Selden,

& Facer Ii, 2000; Dehart-Davis, Marlowe, & Pandey, 2006; Houston, 2000, 2006;

Moynihan & Pandey, 2007; Pandey, Wright, & Moynihan, 2008; Perry, 1996, 1997,

2000; Perry & Hondeghem, 2008; Scott & Pandey, 2005; Steijn, 2008; Vandenabeele,

2008; Wright, 2001, 2007). The study we report here contributes to this stream of

research via an analysis of a survey of federal employees and of the U.S. Office of

Management and Budget’s (U.S. Office of Management and Budget, 2006) Program

Assessment Rating Tool (PART) data. The analysis examines the relationship between

organizational goal characteristics and employee responses about their motivation that

appear clearly relevant to PSM. The dependent variable is an indirect measure of PSM,

however. The survey included one categorical question asking the respondents about

the extent to which they agreed with the statement, “I am motivated to do a good job

by my duty as a public employee.” Agreement with this statement appears to indicate

PSM, but to be clear about the nature of our dependent variable, we will refer to it as

public duty motivation (as a shorter term than public service duty motivation).

This study contributes to understanding PSM by conducting an empirical test about

how organizational goal and task goal properties relate to employees’ responses about

their duty as a public employee as a motivator. A basic question in this analysis con-

cerns whether public duty motivation (and probably PSM) can be influenced by expe-

riences in government service rather than being solely a personal attribute that tends

to lead a person to join government service. While individuals vary in their tendencies

to feel a sense of duty as a public employee, and this may lead some individuals to

seek government service more than others do, will their sense of duty as a government

employee be influenced by conditions of their work, such as the ambiguity or clarity

of their program’s goals? Based on a framework provided by the goal setting theory of

work motivation and by empirical goal ambiguity theory, this study tests the relation-

ships that various goal properties have with public employees’ public duty motivation

in U.S. federal agencies. The goal properties include: organizational goal ambiguity,

job-goal commitment, job-goal importance, job-goal specificity, and mission specific-

ity. One can hypothesize that goal ambiguity (lower goal clarity) will decrease public

duty motivation by making it harder for individuals to focus their efforts and to observe

the impacts of their work. On the other hand, however, goal ambiguity might increase

public duty motivation, because in the absence of clear goals individuals might respond

to and rely on a very general intrinsic, altruistic, or service-oriented source of motivation

(e.g., akin to a very general sense of “doing the right thing” or involvement in a noble

calling). We conduct multinomial logistic analysis of these goal constructs by relating

them to public duty motivation as a categorical variable. For organizational goal ambi-

guity, we develop three dimensions of this concept using data from the 2006 PART assess-

ments conducted by the OMB. For the other four goal concepts, we use the results of the

2005 Merit Principles Survey conducted by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board

(MSPB). The results of the analysis show that two of the dimensions of organizational

goal ambiguity, that is, program evaluation and time-specification goal ambiguity, relate