Weaknesses in Motivation and in Establishing a Meritocratic System: A Portrait of the Portuguese Public Administration

Abstract

The complexities of Public Administration have gained the growing attention of scholars around the world, mainly due to the impacts of the reforms implemented under the doctrine of New Public Management (which aims to apply concepts and practices of private management in public management) on civil servants. The aim of this study is to find out how Portuguese citizens evaluate the Portuguese Public Administration under the aspects of bureaucracy, organisation of human resources, innovation, skills and attitudes of civil servants, its motivation and recognition; and to verify if there are differences of opinion between respondents working in public sector and respondents from other sectors. This study follows a quali-quantitative approach, and data were collected through an online survey in the period from June to December 2020. The survey was answered by 1119 citizens from all districts of Portugal. The main findings reveal a still high level of bureaucracy in the Portuguese Public Administration; weaknesses in the management of human resources, namely regarding the motivation and recognition of civil servants; and difficulties in the establishment of a meritocratic system of recruitment and performance evaluation of civil servants. Statistically significant evaluation differences (chi-square test and non-parametric Mann–Whitney U tests, involving five hypotheses) were found between the public sector and other sectors, except for the motivation variable.

Occupational Stress and Turnover Intentions in Employees of the Portuguese Tax and Customs Authority: Mediating Effect of Burnout and Moderating Effect of Motivation

“…Regarding identified motivation, those with the highest values are from the tax department. The low intrinsic and identified motivation levels in this study are in line with the results of the study conducted by Nishimura et al (2021) on employees from the Portuguese Public Administration.…”

La Meritocracia en la Gestión Pública. Perú

“…Ambos autores, Adriana et al, 2021y Maslow, 1954; en sus indagaciones llegaron a la conclusión de que, la administración pública (AP) ha evolucionado hasta volverse cada vez más compleja. En respuesta a importantes cambios sociales, económicos, culturales y políticos en las naciones, los modelos de gobernanza han cambiado a lo largo de la historia y particularmente en la era moderna.…”

Validation of a scale for the perception of competences and attitudes in the context of public administration

“…Motivation continues to be widely studied by scholars in the areas of Administration and People Management. Particularly in the public sector, motivation is at the heart of the debates on behaviour and performance, because, because of the idiosyncrasies and limitations of public administration, there is a great challenge to maintain the level of motivation and satisfaction in public employees, who, as a rule, do not have access to the attractions and rewards of the private sector (Nishimura et al , 2021).…”