IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/ijmpps/v37y2016i5p804-821.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public service motivation, prosocial behaviours, and career ambitions

Author

Listed:
  • Jaclyn Schede Piatak

Abstract

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to examine the behavioural consequences of public service motivation (PSM) and how motivation relates to an individual’s call to serve both inside and outside of the workplace. More specifically, this study examines whether and how PSM relates to prosocial behaviours – volunteering and giving – and career ambitions to work in the government or non-profit sector among public affair graduate students. Design/methodology/approach - – Logistic regression is used to examine the PSM link using a composite of the 40-item scale, each of the six dimensions – commitment to the public interest, civic duty, social justice, attraction to policymaking, compassion, and self-sacrifice – and the five-item scale from the Merit Principles Survey. The analyses draw upon data from a unique online survey of 122 graduate students in Master of Public Administration and Master of Public Policy programmes. Findings - – The results indicate that people with higher levels of PSM are more likely to want to work in public service and volunteer. However, mixed results were found for the relationship between PSM and giving charitable donations and career ambitions to work in government and no link was found for career ambitions to work in the non-profit sector. Originality/value - – This paper answers calls to examine the dimensions of PSM and examines Perry’s (1996) original conception. The results provide practical implications for human resource managers as well as non-profit and public managers in recruiting and retaining employees and volunteers.

Suggested Citation

  • Jaclyn Schede Piatak, 2016. "Public service motivation, prosocial behaviours, and career ambitions," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 37(5), pages 804-821, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:eme:ijmpps:v:37:y:2016:i:5:p:804-821
    DOI: 10.1108/IJM-12-2014-0248
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJM-12-2014-0248/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJM-12-2014-0248/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/IJM-12-2014-0248?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. AMENDOLA, Francesca, 2019. "he Public Service Motivation: Lessons from the Literature," CELPE Discussion Papers 158, CELPE - CEnter for Labor and Political Economics, University of Salerno, Italy.
    2. Afkhami, Ahmad & Nasr Isfahani, Ali & Abzari, Mahdi & Teimouri, Hadi, 2018. "Antecedents of Employee Participation in Employer-Supported Volunteering Activities: A Systematic Literature Review (in Persian)," Management and Development Process Quarterly (٠صلنامه ٠رایند مدیریت و توسعه), Institute for Management and Planning studies, vol. 31(3), pages 111-150, December.
    3. Alina CIOBANU & Armenia ANDRONICEANU, 2018. "Integrated Human Resources Activities - The Solution For Performance Improvement In Romanian Public Sector Institutions," Management Research and Practice, Research Centre in Public Administration and Public Services, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 10(3), pages 60-79, September.
    4. Elvira NICA & Ana-Madalina POTCOVARU & Ioana PADURARIU, 2021. "The Effect Of Intrinsic And Extrinsic Motivation On Civil Servants’ Performance," Proceedings of the INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE, Faculty of Management, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 15(1), pages 747-756, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:ijmpps:v:37:y:2016:i:5:p:804-821. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.