In charge of safeguarding the public interest: the role of goal clarity in shaping public service motivation and the acceptance of unethical behaviours

Abstract

Ethics are important for personal, organizational and societal development. Although the literature has isolated some remedies and causes of unethical attitudes and behaviours, there is a still a need for further research. When focusing on the public context, it has been suggested that the motivation to serve the public interest has a negative relationship with different unethical outcomes. Thus, one interesting avenue of research is to explain how public service motivation can be enhanced by the outcome of certain managerial practices, which may also lead to ethical benefits indirectly. Using data collected from social workers in Catalonia (Spain), this article confirms that goal clarity directly increases the levels of public service motivation and indirectly reduces the acceptance of unethical behaviours by eliciting public service motivation. Research and practical implications of the findings are discussed. Points for practitioners This study highlights the importance of public service-oriented institutional contexts in indirectly shaping unethical outcomes. The findings recommend to public managers and practitioners to provide goal clarity (through certain human-resource management practices such as appraisal or job design) because it increases public service motivation and indirectly reduces the acceptance of unethical behaviour.

Identification of Public Service Logic (PSL) and Public Service Motivation (PSM) elements in Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives

“…That is, in the present case, the collectiveness trait is reflected in the OGD VCC pursuits by the stakeholders concerned. Furthermore, findings from the present study are also reflective of the need to understand that individual identity is reflected in the PSM stipulations wherein ethicality and empathy go hand‐in‐hand (Ripoll & Schott, 2023) which was found true in the Tanzanian case. This is suggestive of the public officials' considerations of their intrinsic motives for showing concern and empathy for the needs of those involved in the OGD VCC pursuits.…”

Understanding the micro‐foundations of administrative corruption in the public sector: Findings from a systematic literature review

“…This applies particularly to public values such as honesty (Barfort et al, 2019; Olsen et al, 2019), integrity, and impartiality (De Graaf et al, 2018) and public service commitment (DeHart‐Davis, 2007; Ripoll & Ballart, 2020) if person‐organization fit and goal and value clarity is high (Bellé & Cantarelli, 2017; Ripoll, 2022; Tidey, 2016; Zhang et al, 2019). However, PSM's compassion dimension is associated with prosocial motivation and a higher tendency of engaging in white corruption in the sense of prosocial rule‐breaking behavior.…”

Frontiers of public service motivation research in Canada: A scoping review

“…More research in this area would be useful for better understanding: (1) the nature of PSM among Canadian public servants, including the relative weight of the PSM dimensions, and the personal characteristics associated with them; (2) the extent to which PSM and its dimensions contribute to desirable employment outcomes (e.g., satisfaction, engagement, retention) in Canada; and (3) how organizational policies and practices affect PSM and, in turn, how PSM affects the success of policies. Moreover, the non‐Canadian literature suggests that PSM among public servants is influenced by job characteristics (Battaglio & French, 2016, Chen, 2015, Danaeefard et al, 2022, Mer et al, 2022), leadership and supervisory styles (Bro et al, 2017, Caillier, 2015, Campbell, 2018, Fazzi, 2016, Jensen & Bo, 2018, Lauritzen, Grøn & Kjeldsen, 2022, Mer et al, 2022, Nguyen et al, 2023; Nurung, Tamsah, & Azis, 2020), organizational climate (Danaeefard et al, 2022; Dinh et al, 2020, Lee et al, 2019; Ripoll, 2022, Ugaddan, 2019, Wang & Seifert, 2020), peer relations (Deng et al, 2021, Dinh et al, 2020, Lauritzen, Grøn & Kjeldsen, 2022, Lee et al, 2020), and training (Chen 2021). We have no evidence of the extent to which these relationships hold or their relative importance in Canada.…”