Public Service Motivation or Sector Rewards? Two Studies on the Determinants of Sector Attraction

• Published date: 01 March 2020
• Date: 01 March 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X18778334
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X18778334

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2020, Vol. 40(1) 82 –111

© The Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X18778334

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Article

Public Service Motivation or

Sector Rewards? Two

Studies on the Determinants

of Sector Attraction

Julia Asseburg1 and Fabian Homberg2

Abstract

Public sector organizations are competing with the private sector for highly qualified

staff. But the public sector lost attraction as an employer of choice. Public service

motivation (PSM) and different sector rewards have been identified as alternative

drivers of sector attraction. However, it is still unclear to what extent PSM is

associated with sector attraction, especially when controlling for a comprehensive

set of sector rewards. We investigate this sector attraction puzzle through a meta-

analysis (Study 1) focusing on the relation between PSM and sector attraction and

primary data collected from 600 German final-year students (Study 2). The two

studies aggregate the literature on PSM and sector attraction and produce unique

empirical evidence. Thus, we extend the knowledge on the relationship between PSM

and sector attraction across different settings and in Germany, which enables us to

derive implications for public sector recruiters.

Keywords

public service motivation, sector attraction, rewards, HRM

Introduction

Public sector employers struggle to attract highly-qualified recruits and tend to lose

competitions with private sector employers. Recent commercial Employer Branding

Research (Universum Global, 2016) has found that in 2016, students did not perceive

public sector employment as an attractive career path. Humanities and liberal arts

1Universität Hamburg, Germany

2LUISS Guido Carli University, Roma, Italy

Corresponding Author:

Fabian Homberg, Associate Professor, LUISS Business School, Rome, Italy.

Email: fhomberg@luiss.it

778334ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X18778334Review of Public Personnel AdministrationAsseburg and Homberg

research-article2018

Asseburg and Homberg 83

students in the United Kingdom and the United States repeatedly rank public sector

employers at the bottom of such lists. A recent survey of U.S. graduates reports that

60% lean toward private sector employment (National Association of Colleges and

Employers [NACE], 2016).

Also, research does not paint a more favorable picture. For example, a series of in-

depth interviews with students lead Chetkovich (2003) to conclude “[p]ublic policy

students, whose training is intended to produce managers, advocates, and analysts for

public programs, are increasingly likely to enter private-sector employment upon

graduation and less likely than their predecessors to plan long-term careers in govern-

ment” (p. 670). Similarly, according to Lee and Choi (2016), the public sector as an

employer of choice has lost attractiveness, and Delfgaauw and Dur (2010) assert that

too few of high-qualified people decide for careers in the public sector. Clearly, “[t]he

attractiveness of the public sector as an employer is overall perceived as having rather

deteriorated” (Hammerschmid et al., 2013, p. 33).

In contrast, German humanities students repeatedly ranked the Federal Foreign

Office (i.e., equivalent to U.S. Department of State) as their preferred employer, and

German law students ranked three public sector employers on the top ranks (i.e., the

Federal Criminal Police Office, the Federal Foreign Office, and the United Nations;

Universum Global, 2016). These observations indicate substantial differences in sec-

tor attraction across countries. They raise the question whether public sector employ-

ers are able to offer rewards that are likely to attract the desired candidates. Hence, it

is important to distinguish between the contribution motivation makes and the contri-

bution different rewards make to sector attraction.

An early attempt to solve the sector attraction puzzle was made by Perry and Wise

(1990). Invoking the concept of public service motivation (PSM)—defined as “an

individual’s predisposition to respond to motives grounded primarily or uniquely in

public institutions and organizations” (Perry & Wise, 1990, p. 368)—they hypothe-

sized that high levels of PSM lead to self-selection into the public sector. The latter is

due to PSM’s nature as a prosocial motivation that is linked to the individual need to

serve the common good (Kim & Vandenabeele, 2010; Perry & Hondeghem, 2008).

To date, studies investigating the link between PSM and sector attraction yield

mixed results (Bullock, Stritch, & Rainey, 2015; Christensen & Wright, 2011; Hinna,

Homberg, Scarozza, & Verdini, 2016; Pedersen, 2013; Ritz & Waldner, 2011; Rose,

2012; Tschirhart, Reed, Freeman, & Anker, 2008; Vandenabeele, 2008). Hence, it has

remained unclear to what extent PSM is associated with sector attraction, which is an

important question with strong practical implications for public sector recruitment.

We investigate this issue by conducting two related studies: Study 1 presents a

meta-analysis of PSM and sector attraction studies, which is an attempt to identify

whether Perry and Wise’s (1990) original proposition on the link between PSM and

sector attraction holds across studies. Ultimately, this approach allows us to study the

role of contingent factors such as national differences that cannot be investigated in

single-country studies.

Study 2 presents an analysis of sector attraction of 600 German final-year students

who qualify for entry into the highest grade of civil service careers. The aim of Study