Sense of Community, Sense of Community Responsibility, and Public Service Motivation as Predictors of Employee Well-Being and Engagement in Public Service Organizations

• Author: Zheng Yang,Branda Nowell,Neil Boyd,Mary Clare Hano
• DOI: 10.1177/0275074017692875
• Published date: 01 July 2018
• Date: 01 July 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/

American Review of Public Administration

2018, Vol. 48(5) 428 –443

© The Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/0275074017692875

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Article

Introduction

Employee motivation has been a central issue in the field of

public management for many years as scholars have studied

the dualistic benefits motivation can have for employees and

the organization. Researchers have been interested in explor-

ing employee motivation, in part, because of the person-cen-

tric facets it elicits, including the likelihood of engaging in

organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) as well as

worker satisfaction, happiness, and psychological well-being

(Bright, 2008; Locke & Latham, 1990; Malka & Chatman,

2003). In addition, researchers have been focused on deter-

mining whether motivation relates to functional organiza-

tional outcomes like efficiency, effectiveness, and

responsiveness (Brewer & Selden, 2000; Kim, 2005; Ritz,

2009).

In recent years, public management scholars have noted

that organizational cultures and contexts can accentuate, pro-

mote, and stimulate higher levels of employee motivation

(Moynihan & Pandey, 2007; Perry, 2000; Vandenabeele,

2007). In this arena, one of the most researched topics is the

concept of public service motivation (PSM). Scholars have

suggested that PSM can direct applicants toward public ser-

vice–oriented careers (Christensen & Wright, 2011; Perry &

Wise, 1990), and once hired, a significant body of literature

has posited that PSM is linked to motivated activity within

public service–oriented organizations (Alonso & Lewis,

2001; Andersen & Kjeldsen, 2013; Bright, 2008; Homberg,

McCarthy, & Tabvuma, 2015; Naff & Crum, 1999; Perry &

Hondeghem, 2008; Petrovsky & Ritz, 2014; van Loon,

Vandenabeele, & Leisink, 2015).

An alternative and parallel set of arguments in the literature

is nested primarily in the sister discipline of community psy-

chology in relation to the concepts of sense of community (SOC)

and sense of community responsibility (SOC-R). Like PSM, a

SOC and a SOC-R have been posited to act as powerful predic-

tors of motivated states, including employee well-being and

engagement in public settings (Boyd & Nowell, 2014; Nowell

& Boyd, 2010, 2014; Nowell, Izod, Ngaruiya, & Boyd, 2016).

However, to date, there has been limited scholarship seeking to

clarify the relationship of PSM to SOC and SOC-R, and limited

studies showing discriminant validity between these factors in

predicting perceptions and behaviors of motivation in public

and nonprofit service–oriented organizations. Such an exercise

1Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, USA

2North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

3California State University, Dominguez Hills, Carson, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Neil Boyd, Professor of Management, School of Management, Bucknell

University, Lewisburg, PA 17837, USA.

Email: Neil.Boyd@Bucknell.edu

Sense of Community, Sense of Community

Responsibility, and Public Service Motivation

as Predictors of Employee Well-Being and

Engagement in Public Service Organizations

Neil Boyd1, Branda Nowell2, Zheng Yang3, and Mary Clare Hano2

Abstract

Public management scholars have suggested that employee motivation can be accentuated by organizational cultures and

contexts. One of the most researched topics in this regard is the concept of public service motivation (PSM). Research shows

that PSM works to direct applicants toward public service careers and, once hired, can be linked to motivated activity within

public-sector organizations. Similarly, like PSM, a sense of community (SOC) and a sense of community responsibility (SOC-R)

have also been posited to act as powerful predictors of employee well-being and engagement. The present study demonstrates

that SOC-R is a more powerful predictor of employee engagement compared with PSM and SOC. Concurrently, SOC more

strongly predicts employee well-being compared with PSM and SOC-R. The findings bring additional light and clarification to

the predictive power of PSM on employee perceptions and behavior, and they demonstrate that community experiences have

utility in public service settings.

Keywords

sense of community, sense of community responsibility, public service motivation, organizational citizenship, job satisfaction

Boyd et al. 429

can serve to illuminate core assumptions, strengths, and limita-

tions of theoretical concepts that serve to shape our understand-

ing of human behavior in public organizations. Accordingly,

this study addresses this gap by examining whether PSM, SOC,

and SOC-R differentially predict two motivational outcomes of

key concern to the field of public management: OCB and

employee job satisfaction.

PSM in Public Service Organizations

PSM has long been a topic of scholarly interest and is

believed to play an important role in distinguishing the field

of public administration from similar fields such as business

administration (Perry & Hondeghem, 2008; Perry &

Vandenabeele, 2015; Wright & Pandey, 2008). Originally

defined by Perry and Wise (1990) as “an individual’s predis-

position to respond to motives grounded primarily or

uniquely in public institutions and organizations” (p. 368),

the meaning of PSM has been adapted across disciplines and

differs according to nation and region (Bozeman & Su, 2014;

Vandenabeele, Scheepers, & Hondeghem, 2006). A concept

“native” to the discipline of public administration (Perry &

Vandenabeele, 2015, p. 693), PSM is gaining recognition in

the fields of economics, organizational behavior, and politi-

cal science (Bakker, 2015; Gregg, Grout, Ratcliffe, Smith, &

Windmeijer, 2011; D. E. Lewis, 2010; Perry & Vandenabeele,

2015). Despite the diverse definitions and concepts provided

in the literature, PSM is generally considered to emphasize

the unique motives and “other-regarding” behavior of public

servants (Clerkin & Coggburn, 2012; Perry, Hondeghem, &

Wise, 2010), or the “motives and action in the public domain

that are intended to do good for others and shape the well-

being of society” (Perry & Hondeghem, 2008, p. 3).

To date, considerable evidence has converged in support

of the proposition that higher levels of PSM are associated

with an increased likelihood to seek out public service–ori-

ented careers (Bright, 2005, 2009; Vandenabeele, 2008;

Wright & Grant, 2010). In addition, PSM has also been theo-

rized to be an important variable in understanding organiza-

tional attitudes and behaviors at both the individual and

organizational levels of analysis (Petrovsky & Ritz, 2014).

However, empirical support of PSM as a motivational force

in promoting pro-organizational behavior has been mixed

(Alonso & Lewis, 2001; Bright, 2008; Petrovsky & Ritz,

2014; Wright & Pandey, 2008). Although a handful of empir-

ical studies found a positive relationship between PSM and

employee behavior (Brewer & Selden, 1998; Cerase &

Farinella, 2006; Crewson, 1997; Gould-Williams, Mostafa,

& Bottomley, 2013; Homberg et al., 2015; Jensen &

Andersen, 2015; Kim, 2006, 2012; Naff & Crum, 1999;

Pandey, Wright, & Moynihan, 2008; van Loon et al., 2013),

the connection was found in other cases to be nonsignificant

or more complicated (Alonso & Lewis, 2001; Bright, 2008;

Gabris & Simo, 1995; Wright & Pandey, 2008). Several

scholars have argued that the influence of PSM on

organizational behavior may be indirect and mediated

through other factors (e.g., Bright, 2008; Wright & Pandey,

2008), and this logic continues to persist as evidenced by

Bakker’s (2015) recent propositions that public servants with

different levels of PSM deal with job demands and job

exhaustion differently, and that PSM moderates the positive

relationship between job demands and job exhaustion.

Two noteworthy empirical developments in this direction

are the investigations of PSM on person–organization fit and

transformational leadership (Bellé, 2013). Scholars investi-

gating person–environment fit have theorized that because

PSM represents a value-stance that is generally more consis-

tent with the value-stance embraced by public-serving orga-

nizations, it increases the likelihood of value congruence for

individuals with high PSM employed in a public-serving

organization or agency. A significant body of existing

research has shown that value congruence is a significant

predictor of a number of work-related attitudes and behav-

iors, and research of the person–environment fit mediational

hypothesis has received some preliminary support. For

example, Wright and Pandey (2008) found a significant indi-

rect effect of PSM on job satisfaction, mediated by value

congruence. Bright (2007) found that PSM had no direct

impact on self-reported job performance, and he showed that

the relationship between PSM and job satisfaction or turn-

over intentions was significantly reduced when personal

assessments of person–environment fit were present (Bright,

2008). Similarly, Warren and Chen (2013) conducted a meta-

analysis which demonstrated that PSM predicts performance

outcomes, yet PSM is commonly attenuated by control fac-

tors or moderators that are present in various PSM perfor-

mance studies. More recently, van Loon et al. (2013) showed

that the PSM–job satisfaction relationship depends on the

societal impact potential (SIP) through the job and organiza-

tional type, and Andersen and Kjeldsen (2013) demonstrated

that PSM is mediated by a motivation to help specific indi-

vidual recipients of public services (called user orientation)

in private work settings. Homberg et al.’s (2015) recent

meta-analysis of the relationship between PSM and job satis-

faction showed that the relationship becomes increasingly

pronounced and is stronger when jobs explicitly offer indi-

viduals opportunities to serve the public. Furthermore, their

work demonstrated the positive relationship between PSM

and job satisfaction was present across studies (Homberg

et al., 2015).

A second model that has received some attention concerns

PSM and transformational leadership. Early investigations of

this model theorized that transformational leaders could affect

organizational attitudes and performance by strengthening

PSM in employees. For example, consistent with arguments

put forth by Paarlberg and Lavigna (2010), Wright, Moynihan,

and Pandey (2012) hypothesized that transformational leader-

ship would have an indirect effect on mission valence through

increasing PSM. Results from their study found no direct

relationship between transformational leadership and mission