Pulling the Levers: Transformational Leadership, Public Service Motivation, and Mission Valence

• Author: Bradley E. Wright,Sanjay K. Pandey,Donald P. Moynihan
• Published date: 01 March 2012
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2011.02496.x
• Date: 01 March 2012

Bradley E. Wright is associate profes-

sor of political science at the University of

North Carolina at Charlotte. His research

focuses on how employee attitudes and

behavior are inf‌l uenced by the interaction

between characteristics of the employee

and their organizational work environment.

E-mail: bwright@uncc.edu

Donald P. Moynihan is professor of

public affairs in the La Follette School of

Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin

at Madison. His research examines the

application of organization theory to public

management issues such as performance,

budgeting, homeland security, election

administration, and employee behavior. He

is author of The Dynamics of Perform-

ance Management: Constructing

Information and Reform, which was

named best book by the Academy of Man-

agement’s Public and Nonprof‌i t Division.

E-mail: dmoynihan@lafollette.wisc.edu

Sanjay K. Pandey is associate professor

in the School of Public Affairs and Admin-

istration at Rutgers University in Newark,

New Jersey. He conducts research on public

management and health policy.

E-mail: skpandey@andromeda.rutgers.edu

206 Public Administration Review • March | April 2012

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 72, Iss. 2, pp. 206–215. © 2011 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.111/j.1540-6210.2011.02496 .x.

Bradley E. Wright

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Donald P. Moynihan

University of Wisconsin at Madison

Sanjay K. Pandey

Rutgers University at Newark

 is article contributes to our understanding of public

service motivation and leadership by investigating ways

in which organizational leaders can reinforce and even

augment the potential ef‌f ects of public service motivation

on employees’ attraction to the organization’s mission

(mission valence).  e results contribute to two research

questions. First, the f‌i ndings provide new evidence on

the sources of public service motivation.  e authors f‌i nd

that transformational leadership is an organizational

factor associated with higher public service motivation.

Second, the article examines the relationship between

transformational leadership and mission valence.  e

authors f‌i nd that transformational leadership has an

important indirect ef‌f ect on mission valence through

its inf‌l uence on clarifying

organizational goals and fostering

public service motivation.

The fundamental ques-

tion of how to motivate

purposeful action and

performance in public organiza-

tions remains with us.  ere

is no shortage of theories, but there is a lack of clear

evidence to inform choices among the myriad alterna-

tives. To what extent should organizations emphasize

intrinsic or extrinsic motivators? To what extent should

managers focus attention on formal management sys-

tems versus informal systems? What role can leadership

play? In short, organizations and individual managers

need to better understand which levers they can call

on, and to what ef‌f ect (Moynihan and Pandey 2007a).

 is article of‌f ers empirical evidence on these ques-

tions by investigating the mechanisms by which trans-

formational leaders can activate levers that enhance

mission valence. Given the long-standing recognition

of the power of worthy and attractive goals by organi-

zation and management scholars (e.g., Barnard 1938),

it is important to gain a better understanding of what

makes organizational goals attractive and compel-

ling to individual employees. We characterize this as

mission valence, a concept advanced by Rainey and

Steinbauer (1999), who draw on expectancy theory

to def‌i ne it as employee “af‌f ective orientations toward

particular outcomes” associated with an organization’s

mission (Vroom 1964, 15).  us, mission valence

can be viewed as an employee’s perceptions of the at-

tractiveness or salience of an organization’s purpose or

social contribution. Recent scholarship promotes the

argument that mission valence enhances the satisfac-

tion that an individual experiences (or anticipates to

receive) from advancing the organizational mission,

and, in turn, it can be expected to inf‌l uence the ability

of the organization to recruit, retain, and motivate its

employees (Wright 2007).

Despite the potential importance

of the relationship between mis-

sion valence and public service

motivation (PSM), it remains

understudied. In particular, we

know little about the role that

organizational leadership can

play in fostering public service

motivation and mission valence

(Park and Rainey 2008). A recent assessment of the

state of research in public service motivation underlined

the need to better explore the role of leadership:

[L]eaders can inf‌l uence public service motiva-

tion through several mechanisms, including en-

gaging employees’ existing values, infusing jobs

with meaning, and highlighting and rewarding

public service values.  ese processes are not

well understood …  e specif‌i c challenges

worth investigating include how leaders raise

the salience of collective identities and values

in followers’ self-concepts, linking the organi-

zational mission to organization members’ and

clients’ identities and values, and linking mem-

bers’ job behaviors to their identities and values.

(Perry and Hondeghem 2008, 308–9)

Indeed, Paarlberg and Lavigna (2010) argue that one

of the main challenges for research on public service

Pulling the Levers: Transformational Leadership, Public

Service Motivation, and Mission Valence

Despite the potential

importance of the relationship

between mission valence and

public service motivation

(PSM), it remains understudied.