Do Trust and Culture Matter for Public Service Motivation Development? Evidence From Public Sector Employees in Korea

Abstract

Ethical values and performance have gained importance in the Korean public sector because of the new public management wave and social issues such as corruption. This study examines how the effects of types of organizational culture, such as performance-driven culture and ethics-driven culture, serve as the antecedents of public service motivation (PSM) among central government agencies, public enterprises, and executive agencies in Korea. Furthermore, it investigates how trust in top management affects PSM and how organizational culture moderates this relationship. A survey of 1,216 Korean public employees and seven focus group interviews show that trust in management strongly predicts PSM. Performance-driven culture is positively and significantly associated with norm-based PSM and affective PSM, and ethics-driven culture predicts rational PSM. The moderating effects of organizational culture differ by PSM dimension.

Commitment to Public Interest and Public Service Motivation Development Challenges: A Qualitative Inquiry

“…When employees see that their leaders are showing prosocial behavior, it motivates them to also show similar behaviours and this promotes their level of PSM. Th ese results are consistent with other research that reveals that employee PSM levels can either be improved or reduced by the prevailing organizational culture, employee knowledge about events in their organization, and leadership behaviour (Lee et al, 2020;Ritz & Brewer, 2013;Kjeldsen, 2012).…”

“…Th is evidence is corroborated by Cooke et al, (2019). Other challenges to PSM development include lack of training, poor remuneration, (Yung, 2014), lack of trust in leadership (Lee et al, 2020), and corruption (Jacobson, 2011). From the above, although public employees are expected to promote the public interest, there remain some issues that need to be addressed to achieve this.…”

Public Service Motivation and Turnover Intention: Testing the Mediating Effects of Job Attitudes

“…Finally, given that PSM might change across cultures (Kim, 2017;Lee et al, 2020), it must be cautious to generalize the findings from one region (e.g., Yunnan province) to other regions of China. It is quite probable that individuals' PSM levels might vary with region because each region of China has diversified ethnic culture.…”

“All still quiet on the non-Western front?” Non-Western public service motivation scholarship: 2015–2020

“…One such attempt was Chen et al (2018) and involved insights from SDT, rather than PSM. Other studies (Kim, 2017a(Kim, , 2017bLee et al, 2019Lee et al, , 2020 included separate items on culture and values, such as Confucianism, while others still relied on interviews or content analysis to gauge the role of the context in civil servants' motivations, perceptions and attitudes (Moloney & Chu, 2016;Peretz, 2020;Wang & Wang, 2020).…”