The growth in international research on public service motivation (PSM) raises a number of important questions about the degree to which the theory and research developed in one country can contribute to our understanding of PSM in other counties. To help address this issue, this study revisits the conceptual and operational definitions of PSM to address weaknesses previously noted in the literature. Although some important steps have been taken to both improve and internationalize the PSM scale, this work has been done incrementally. In contrast, this study takes a more systematic and comprehensive approach by combining the efforts of international PSM scholars to develop and then test a revised measurement instrument for PSM in 12 countries. Although the resulting four dimensional 16-item measure of PSM reported here provides a better theoretical and empirical foundation for the measurement of PSM, our results suggest that the exact meaning and scaling of PSM dimensions are likely to differ across cultures and languages. These results raise serious concerns regarding the ability to develop a single universal scale of PSM, or making direct comparisons of PSM across countries.Its earlier versions were delivered at the Annual Conference

Bradley E. Wright is associate professor 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.

Over the past half century two competing hypotheses in sociological inquiry have provided interpretations of the well-documented association between low socioeconomic status and mental disorders. The selection hypothesis asserts that mental disorders impair status attainment, whereas the causation hypothesis states that conditions of life associated with low socioeconomic status markedly increase the risk of mental disorders. Using data from the longitudinal Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (n=1037), we examine selection and causation processes during the transition to young adulthood by investigating the mutual influence of mental disorders and educational attainment, a core element of socioeconomic status. The Dunedin Study follows a cohort from birth to age 21, and includes psychiatric diagnoses for study members at ages 15 and 21 using DSM criteria. We focus on the four disorders of anxiety, depression, anti-social disorder, and attention deficit disorder and find a unique relationship with socioeconomic status for each one. These findings highlight the need for (a) greater consideration of antisocial disorders in the status attainment process and (b) more theoretical development in the sociology of mental disorders to account for disorder-specific relations with socioeconomic status.

Do religious beliefs and behaviors deter criminal behavior? The existing evidence surrounding the effect of religion on crime is varied, contested, and inconclusive, and currently no persuasive answer exists as to the empirical relationship between religion and crime. In this article, the authors address this controversial issue with a meta-analysis of 60 previous studies based on two questions: (1) What is the direction and magnitude of the effect of religion on crime? (2) Why have previous studies varied in their estimation of this effect? The results of the meta-analysis show that religious beliefs and behaviors exert a moderate deterrent effect on individuals' criminal behavior. Furthermore, previous studies have systematically varied in their estimation of the religion-on-crime effect due to differences in both their conceptual and methodological approaches.

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This study contributes to our understanding of public service motivation by clarifying the mechanisms through which public service motivation influences employee attitudes previously linked to organizational performance. In particular, the authors find that the relationship between employee public service motivation and job satisfaction is mediated by the extent to which the employee perceives that his or her values are congruent with those of the public sector organization he or she works for. This study suggests that caution should be exercised when making claims regarding the effects of public service motivation and that greater emphasis should be placed on ways public sector organizations can foster employee—organization value congruence.

Although most research focuses on person-organization fit to explain public service motivation (PSM)'s influence on job choice, this study investigates the independent effects of both person-organization fit and person-job fit using a policy capturing research design and a sample of first-year law students. Our findings suggest that PSM may play a more important role in person-job fit than person-organization fit. Consistent across three sectors of employment, individuals with stronger PSM were more likely to accept jobs that emphasize service to others-whether that be pro bono work (private sector), client interaction (public sector), or client representation (nonprofit sector). After controlling for characteristics that influence person-job fit, PSM neither increased the likelihood that individuals would accept a public sector job nor decreased the likelihood that they would accept a private sector job. Among other things, our findings suggest that sector may be an inaccurate proxy for values that are often taken for granted in PSM studies. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of a faculty research grant from the University of North Carolina Charlotte that facilitated this study. We are also indebted career services personnel at each of the law schools for their generous assistance. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge valuable comments from anonymous reviewers of this manuscript

This article reviews the literature on work motivation in the public sector, with careful attention to the underlying theoretical assumptions of this body of work and the empirical evidence it has generated. The topic of work motivation has received relatively little attention in the public sector; the research that does exist has been largely data driven, guided at best by theories that have not incorporated more contemporary research. In this article I will draw on current psychological research on work motivation, as well as the theory and empirical evidence regarding the unique characteristics of public organizations and employees, and develop a revised public-sector model of work motivation that emphasizes variables such as procedural constraints, goal content, and goal commitment. In a recent article, Behn (1995) urged scholars to focus their research on the big questions in public management. One of the most important of these questions, according to Behn, concerns motivation. Specifically, the field needs to learn how "public managers [can] motivate public employees (and citizens too) to pursue important public purposes with intelligence and energy" (p. 319). This observation, however, is not new. Perry and Porter (1982, 97) noted nearly two decades ago that "the literature on motivation tends to concentrate too heavily on employees within industrial and business organizations." Perry and Porter proposed, as did Behn, a research agenda to improve the understanding of the motivational context in public-sector organizations. Unfortunately, very little research has fulfilled this agenda. While work motivation has been a prominent area of interest in organizational behavior (Cooper and Robertson 1986) and continues to be one of the most frequently discussed topics in psychology (Rousseau 1997), it has been (Balk 1974) and continues