Institutional antecedents of public service motivation: Administrative regime and sector of economy

Abstract

New findings on public service motivation in the public sector often contradict the previous ones. Such deviations are regularly explained by the uniqueness of the institutional settings of the sample. Yet, only few studies have compared PSM across different institutional environments; even less is known about nonprofit employees. We can only speculate that their institutional antecedents of PSM resemble their public counterparts because of the public benefit orientation of their work. Utilizing a Most Similar Systems Design method to test the institutional propositions on a sample of public and nonprofit employees from two different institutional environments, the present study confirms that (a) PSM variation of public employees across different countries can be explained by a statelevel institutional variation, and (b) for PSM of nonprofit employees, the institutional environment of a country may be irrelevant. The results confirm earlier propositions of the sectoral differences of PSM and urge us to revisit the generalizability of the previous findings of PSM relationships because they can be limited by the similarity of the observed systems.

Perceived organizational support in public and nonprofit organizations: Systematic review and directions for future research

“…It is important to know where in the world the POS studies were conducted because different national and regional institutions can differently affect POS, just as with other perceptions of public and nonprofit employees, for example, their public service motivation (Prysmakova, 2021b). From the perspectives of institutions, we observe two dominant frames of global POS research: Anglo-American and Asian.…”

“…Public service motivation. On the contrary, intrinsic rewards were proven to be crucial in motivating public and nonprofit employees (Prysmakova, 2021a(Prysmakova, , 2021b. Even though the relationships between POS and public service motivation are not well examined, some studies show that individual public service motivation connects with employees' perceptions of their organization as good or bad, and it affects its perceived fairness (Wang and Seifert, 2020).…”

“…Due to better extrinsic rewards and more opportunities for professional development and growth in the private sector (Perry et al, 2010), and the limited financial resources of the public and nonprofit ones, employees' retention in the latter requires sector-adapted approaches. For example, public service motivation research suggests that the individual intrinsic motivation of public and nonprofit employees should be put first (Prysmakova, 2021a(Prysmakova, , 2021b. Thus, we can expect that as a mechanism that reassures relationships with one's employer and encourages public service motivation, POS can compensate for low extrinsic rewards (Perry et al, 2010).…”

“…While we acknowledge the within-differences between the public and nonprofit sectors (Lee and Wilkins, 2011; Prysmakova, 2021a), at this point of the concept evolution, we suggest studying them together, as they are both centered around a mission to serve the public interest and to benefit others (Moore, 2000; Prysmakova, 2021b). On individual levels, these sectors' pro-social orientation often translates into a more important role for intrinsic than extrinsic motivation, inviting us to study POS distinctly and more systematically from private profit-maximizing contexts (Park and Word, 2012).…”

The Impact of Servant Leadership on Proactive Service Behavior: a Moderated Mediation Model

“…Essentially the individual PSM can be changed, probably promoted by the beneficial external practices or environmental influence [27]. Recently, some relevant empirical researches have confirmed that the leadership style is a powerful element of the influence on subordinate PSM [28,29]. For example, Bellé (2014) emphasized the relationship between transformational leadership and PSM [30].…”