Public Service Motivation Research: Lessons for Practice

• Author: James L. Perry,Robert K. Christensen,Laurie Paarlberg
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12796
• Published date: 01 July 2017
• Date: 01 July 2017

Public Service Motivation Research: Lessons for Practice 529

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 4, pp. 529–542. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12796.

James L. Perry is Distinguished

Professor Emeritus in the School of

Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana

University, Bloomington. He is editor in chief

of

Public Administration Review.

E-mail: perry@indiana.edu

Laurie Paarlberg is associate professor

in the Bush School of Government and

Public Service, Texas A&M University. She

teaches courses in nonprofit and public

management. Her nonprofit research

focuses on the changing structure of local

philanthropic systems.

E-mail: l.paarlberg@tamu.edu

Robert K. Christensen is associate

professor in Brigham Young University ’ s

Marriott School of Management. His

research interests include attraction,

motivation, and work behaviors related to

public service careers and organizations.

He is a research fellow at Arizona State

University ’ s Center for Organization

Research and Design and coresearcher

at Seoul National University ’ s Center for

Government Competitiveness. He and James

L. Perry are coeditors of Wiley ’ s

Handbook

of Public Administration,

3rd edition (2015).

E-mail: rkc@byu.edu

Theory to Practice

Abstract : Public service motivation research has proliferated in parallel with concerns about how to improve the per-

formance of public service personnel. However, scholarship does not always inform management and leadership. This

article purposefully reviews public service motivation research since 2008 to determine the extent to which researchers

have identified lessons for practice. The results of the investigation support several lessons—among them using public

service motivation as a selection tool, facilitating public service motivation through cooperation in the workplace,

conveying the significance of the job, and building leadership based on public service values. These results are impor-

tant because they offer evidence that the field is coalescing around tactics that managers and leaders can use to address

enduring concerns about employee motivation in the public sector. They also prompt us to articulate ideas that can

guide a tighter integration of research and practice moving forward.

Practitioner Points

• Employee public service motivation (PSM) is changeable by both intended and unintended organizational

and management practices.

• Attracting and retaining employees with high PSM is a reliable way to enhance employee performance and

agency mission accomplishment.

• Organizations that intentionally nurture PSM develop stronger ties between organizational and employee

values and goals.

• Relationships between employees and service beneficiaries should be leveraged for motivational advantages.

• Leaders should communicate and model public service values.

Hal G. Rainey, Editor

Robert K. Christensen

Brigham Young University

Laurie Paarlberg

Texas A&M University

James L. Perry

Indiana University, Bloomington

Public Service Motivation Research: Lessons for Practice

G overnments around the world continue

to be attentive to an issue that is as old as

the field of public administration: how

to motivate employees who are doing the public ’ s

business. Recent headlines in the United States, for

example, have prominently raised the failures of

traditional incentives in the U.S. Department of

Veterans Affairs and the challenges of motivating

employees (Moynihan, DeLeire, and Enami 2015 ).

In Great Britain, pressure to admit patients to

emergency rooms within four hours of their arrival

to improve the speed of health care delivery has led

to ambulances delaying the arrival time of patients

to meet performance targets (Shaw, Taylor, and Dix

2015 ). In Italy, performance schemes implemented in

the 1990s have led to public health employee bonuses

awarded either uniformly or based on seniority rather

than performance (Micali 2009 ).

In the 1980s, in the aftermath of experiments such

as the U.S. Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of

1978, public administration scholars recognized

the limitations of the application of traditional

motivational schemes in the public sector (Pearce

and Perry 1983 ; Perry, Petrakis, and Miller 1989 ).

Traditional systems were largely adapted from

the private sector. Designed around self-interest,

extrinsic, usually pecuniary incentives, and a high

degree of organizational control over prescribed

behaviors, these practices generally fell far short of

expectations to transform employee performance

in government organizations. For example, more

recent studies suggest that the negative effects of pay

for performance are stronger in public sector than

in private sector organizations (Frey, Homberg, and

Osterloh 2013 ). In general, the importation of private

sector management has not always yielded benefits for

performance in the public sector (Weibel, Rost, and

Osterloh 2010 ). The failings of the CSRA and other

initiatives like it triggered new research about public

service motivation (PSM) (Perry and Wise 1990 ) that

has flourished for a quarter century.

The research on public service motivation has grown

to unexpected levels. Ritz, Brewer, and Neumann

( 2016 ) put the volume of research in 2013 and 2014