Revisiting the Motivational Bases of Public Service: Twenty Years of Research and an Agenda for the Future

Abstract

How has research regarding public service motivation evolved since James L. Perry and Lois Recascino Wise published their essay “The Motivational Bases of Public Service” 20 years ago? The authors assess subsequent studies in public administration and in social and behavioral sciences as well as evolving definitions of public service motivation. What have we learned about public service motivation during the last two decades? What gaps in our understanding and knowledge have appeared with respect to the three propositions offered by Perry and Wise? This essay charts new directions for public service motivation scholarship to help clarify current research questions, advance comparative research, and enhance our overall understanding of individuals’ public service motives.

Review: Public service motivation—practical problems, scientific evidence and the role of a research community

“…It might be the case that PSM has a 'dark side', leading to burn-out and disenchantment with the organization and its policies and practices. Combined with the questions that are still open on PSM (Perry et al, 2010;Wright and Grant 2010;Vandenabeele et al, 2014), we think there is need for more evidence on how PSM operates. This Public Money & Management theme issue helps to fill the gap between what we want to know and the existing evidence (for an overview of the present knowledge-base on PSM, see Vandenabeele and Van Loon, 2015).…”

“…Other reasons for the popularity of PSM have been elaborately discussed elsewhere, see Vandenabeele et al (2014) and Perry et al (2010). Afterwards, we will identify remaining questions on the topic of PSM.…”

Crowding Out Intrinsic Motivation in the Public Sector

“…There is a clear distinction in the literature between PSM or prosocial motivation and intrinsic motivation (see, e.g., Grant 2008;Perry et al 2010). Although PSM could be viewed a special case of prosocial motivation, both PSM and prosocial motivation could be enhanced by the presence of intrinsic motivation.…”

Serving the public interest in several ways: Theory and empirics

“…Our theoretical predictions point to a possible ‡aw in the empirical literature. Numerous public administration scholars and several economists have examined whether workers in some sectors or job types are more altruistic than in others (see Perry et al 2010 and Perry and Vandenabeele 2015 for overviews). Many of these studies measure a worker's altruistic preferences using data on the worker's behavior outside the workplace, among others on the worker's donations to charity (e.g.…”