Does Perceptions of Organizational Prestige Mediate the Relationship Between Public Service Motivation, Job Satisfaction, and the Turnover Intentions of Federal Employees?

Abstract

Public opinion polls consistently suggest that government employment is not considered to be highly prestigious by most Americans. These negative images are likely to stifle the public sector’s recruitment and retention efforts. Scholars have suggested that individuals with high levels of public service motivation (PSM) are better equipped to work in these environments, yet no studies can be found that have directly explored the relationships between PSM and the perceptions that public employees hold regarding the images that citizens hold of their organizations. This article sought to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the extent to which perceptions of organizational prestige (POP) mediate the relationship between PSM and the job satisfaction and turnover intentions of public employees. Using a sample of federal employees working for the Transportation Security Administration in Oregon, this study found that POP fully mediated the relationship between PSM and turnover intentions and partially mediated the relationship between PSM and job satisfaction. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Antecedents of Work Outcomes of Local Government Employees: The Mediating Role of Public Service Motivation

“…PSM encourages civil servants to provide convenient services to the public to increase satisfaction with their respective jobs and work performance. This finding is consistent with diverse PSM scholars showing a correlation of PSM and job satisfaction (Bright, 2021;Prysmakova & Vandenabeele, 2020) and PSM job performance (Stefurak et al, 2020;Yudiatmaja, 2019). performance (Schwarz et al, 2016(Schwarz et al, , 2020.…”

“…Individual dimensions recognized as determinants of work outcomes include emotional intelligence (Levitats & Vigoda-Gadot, 2017), respect and intimidation (Nguyen et al, 2019), and enthusiasm (Duan et al, 2021). On the other hand, organizational aspects that are widely recognized as antecedents of work outcomes are usually procedural justice (Quratulain et al, 2019), organizational politics (Asrar-ul-Haq et al, 2019;Park & Lee, 2020), high-level performance work practices (Ogbonnaya & Valizade, 2018;Rubel et al, 2020), and organizational prestige (Bright, 2021).…”

Development and Validation of the Job Satisfaction Brief Scale

“…Job satisfaction, according to Spector, is how people feel about their work and various aspects of their jobs. As a result, job satisfaction is seen as an attitude variable, and therefore, job satisfaction is one of the most critical attitudes in organizations (Bright, 2021). Thus, Spector (1997) defines job satisfaction as a global feeling about the job or a related constellation of attitudes about various aspects of the job.…”

The Mediation of Organizational Diagnosis on Motivation and Job Satisfaction of Librarians in Region Xi

“…However, identity is compliance support of satisfaction. Moreover, job satisfaction among librarians is one of the predictors of their motivation to put their affective and cognitive capital into achieving their goals (Bright, 2020).…”