Public Service Motivation, Personality, and the Hiring Decisions of Public Managers: An Experimental Study

• DOI: 10.1177/0091026019855749
• Date: 01 June 2020
• Published date: 01 June 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0091026019855749

Public Personnel Management

2020, Vol. 49(2) 193 –217

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0091026019855749

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Article

Public Service Motivation,

Personality, and the Hiring

Decisions of Public Managers:

An Experimental Study

Daniel E. Bromberg1 and Étienne Charbonneau2

Abstract

One of the main practical recommendations from the copious public service

motivation literature is that human resources (HR) professionals should use public

service motivation (PSM) to assist in selecting candidates for public service jobs. To

test if PSM is indeed attractive to HR professionals in selecting applicants to work in

the public sector, 238 HR managers recruited from the International Public Management

Association for Human Resources rated three cover letters and then rated themselves

about PSM and the Big 5 personality traits. The cover letters were randomized on

most likely combinations of PSM and Big 5, revealed in earlier research. Our results

are that real HR professionals did not rate cover letters more highly when they

displayed aspects of PSM.

Keywords

public service motivation, Big 5 personality traits, hiring decisions, behavioral public

administration

Introduction

While candidates might apply to public sector jobs yearning for stability, decades of

research about public service motivation (PSM) find that the average employee in the

public sector shows more prosocial behaviors than their private sector counterparts

demonstrate. PSM is a “set of needs a person possesses related to serving society”

1University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA

2École nationale d’administration publique, Montreal, Québec, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Daniel E. Bromberg, University of New Hampshire, 321 Horton Social Science Center, Academic Way,

Durham, NH 03824, USA.

Email: daniel.bromberg@unh.edu

855749PPMXXX10.1177/0091026019855749Public Personnel ManagementBromberg and Charbonneau

research-article2019

194 Public Personnel Management 49(2)

(Breaugh, Ritz, & Alfes, 2018, p. 1428). This sentiment has led many to consider the

potential for hiring managers to utilize PSM to attract and select ideal candidates.

Mann (2006) concludes his study with a question: “So the question remains: Can pub-

lic service motivation offer any hope to government employers? The answer may have

to await further research . . .” (p. 43). In the same journal, Jacobson (2011) notes the

complexities associated with recruiting for PSM; the fact, along with her findings on

developing PSM, suggests an “alternative strategy” that might better suit public sector

managers (p. 230). Two years later, based on his findings, Bright (2013) notes that,

“PSM may be best used as a strategy to recruit individuals to public organizations

rather than specific public sector jobs” (p. 22). These scholars are not alone on consid-

ering PSM as a recruitment strategy; yet, research that addresses this question in a

direct manner remains elusive.

In a comprehensive systematic literature review, Ritz, Brewer, and Neumann

(2016) find that after 25 years of scholarship, PSM “has not been fully integrated into

the human resource management practices of public organizations, and researchers

have not translated theory to practice effectively” (p. 7). In part, this article responds

to that gap in the literature. However, as PSM is not the only behavioral quality of an

individual, this study considers a second and related void in the literature. Wright

(2015) observed an absence of work on personality in public administration scholar-

ship. He explains that scholarship “too often fails to incorporate more contemporary

and valid personality frameworks such as the five-factor model” (p. 799). While both

the psychology and management literature have moved in this direction, public admin-

istration lags behind (Cooper, Knotts, McCord, & Johnson, 2013). In addition,

Bozeman and Su (2015) note that PSM scholarship would benefit greatly from the use

of experimental methods. While there are indications that public management is mov-

ing more in the direction of experimental methods (James, Jilke, & Van Ryzin, 2017),

these gaps in the literature remain and are pressing concerns for both research and

practice. Using an experimental survey design, we examine how one’s personality

traits and PSM might affect the hiring process.

The purpose of this study is to simulate human resource (HR) practices by combin-

ing the Five-Factor Model (Big 5) personality traits with PSM components in an

experimental survey design. Primarily, our study seeks to understand the extent to

which an applicant’s personality and commitment to public service—as presented in

his or her cover letter—affects their chances of being hired for a public sector job. Do

HR managers perceive applications alluding to certain personality dimensions and/or

PSM elements as more desirable? Are HR managers more likely to invite these appli-

cants to an interview? Second, controlling for the potential influence of the “attraction

paradigm” (Byrne, 1971) or attraction-selection hypothesis (Holt, 2018), we test to see

if a manager’s own personality traits and PSM affect their hiring decisions.

Literature Review

While public administration research is increasingly exploring PSM, the bulk of this

literature is limited to the role of PSM from the perspective of the employee (or