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In seeking to explain the antecedents of public service motivation, James Perry focuses on the formative role of sociohistorical context. This study tests Perry's theory and examines the role that organizational factors play in shaping public service motivation, based on responses from a national survey of state government health and human service managers. The findings support the role of sociohistorical context, showing that public service motivation is strongly and positively related to level of education and membership in professional organizations. The results also underscore the significant influence of organizational institutions, indicating that red tape and length of organizational membership are negatively related to public service motivation, whereas hierarchical authority and reform efforts have a positive relationship. Therefore, public organizations have both an opportunity and a responsibility to create an environment that allows employees to feel they are contributing to the public good. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

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Essays on Work Motivation and the Workplace

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In seeking to explain the antecedents of public service motivation, James Perry focuses on the formative role of sociohistorical context. This study tests Perry's theory and examines the role that organizational factors play in shaping public service motivation, based on responses from a national survey of state government health and human service managers. The finding support the role of sociohistorical context, showing that public service motivation is strongly and positively related to level of education and membership in professional organizations. The results also underscore the significant influence of organizational institutions, indicating that red tape and length of organizational membership are negatively related to public service motivation, whereas hierarchical authority and reform efforts have a positive relationship. Therefore, public organizations have both an opportunity and a responsibility to create an environment that allows employees to feel they are contributing to the public good.

Although it is of recent vintage, the concept of public service motivation (PSM) represents a positive example of theory development in public administration. This theory has significant practical relevance, as it deals with the relationship between motivation and the public interest. The construct of the public interest is central to traditional public administration scholarship (Appleby 1945; Herring 1936). In recent years, this theoretical development has been gradually joined by empirical work as scholars have sought to operationalize what public interest means for employees, why they develop a strong sense of public service, and how that sense influences their behavior (e.g., Alonso and Lewis 2001; Brewer and Selden 1998; Brewer, Selden, and Facer 2000; Crewson 1997, Houston 2000; Perry 1996, 1997).

Despite such research, there remains a need for more empirical work to validate and test this theory, which has continued to expand. Thus far, much of the research has focused on establishing the existence of PSM, usually by comparing employee motivations across sectors. The relevance of much of these findings remains in dispute because of the use of different or indirect measures of PSM and incomplete theories of how PSM occurs and the effects it generates. A series of publications by James Perry removed a great deal of ambiguity about the theoretical and empirical approaches that are appropriate for studying PSM. Perry carefully devised a series of scales to measure PSM in 1996 and provided empirical evidence on the causes of PSM in 1997. In 2000, he articulated the most comprehensive theory of the causes of PSM thus far, identifying sociohistorical context as a primary influence.

Our model adds to the limited empirical research on PSM by partially testing the theory proposed by Perry (2000) and deepening that theory by focusing greater attention on the role of organizational institutions. In extending Perry's model to account for the effect of organizational institutions on PSM, we employ a number of organizational variables: organizational culture, red tape, hierarchy, reform orientation, and length of organizational membership. We also include in the model some salient sociohistorical factors identified by Perry (level of education and membership in professional organizations), along with a number of demographic controls (age, gender, and income). We test this model on two of Perry's four dimensions of PSM (attraction to policy making and commitment to public interest/civic duty) exhibited by a sample of health and human service managers in the 50 state governments.

The Importance of Public Service Motivation

The literature on PSM has been thoroughly reviewed elsewhere (see, in particular, Brewer and Selden 1998; Perry 2000; Perry, Mesch, and Paarlberg 2006). Therefore, we simply highlight the major contributions to underline the importance of the topic.

Perry and Wise provide the widely accepted definition of PSM: "an individual's predisposition to respond to motives grounded primarily or uniquely in public institutions and organizations" (Perry and Wise 1990, 368).1 As Brewer, Selden, and Facer (2000) note, PSM is important not just to motivation but also to productivity, improved management practices, accountability, and trust in government, making it one of the major topics of investigation in public administration today. The relevance of PSM, though particularly high for government, is not limited to this sector, as employees in the private and nonprofit sectors also exhibit PSM to varying degrees (Wittmer 1991). Therefore, PSM not only helps us understand the traditional differences between the public, nonprofit, and private sectors, but, given the increasingly blurry boundaries between sectors, it is useful in understanding public-regarding behaviors in organizations that are characterized by varying levels of publicness (Bozeman 1987).

Although some of the empirical work offers evidence of no difference between public and private organizations on extrinsic and intrinsic motivators (Buchanan 1975; Gabris and Simo 1995), the bulk of the empirical evidence supports the existence of a public service ethic among public employees. Careful investigation of the PSM construct supports its validity (Brewer, Selden, and Facer 2000; Coursey and Pandey, forthcoming; Perry 1996, 1997). Support for PSM can also be found in cross-sector comparisons. Rainey (1982), for example, found that public and private managers showed significant differences in their perceptions of the importance of different types of rewards. In contrast to private managers, public managers regarded public service and work that is helpful to others as important, whereas higher pay, status, and prestige were less important. Wittmer (1991) came to a similar conclusion in his examination of reward preferences among government, hybrid, and business sector managers.2

Thus, PSM provides a theory of motivation that links the pursuit of the public interest with administrative behavior. Perry and Wise (1990) argue that individuals with a high sense of public interest are more likely to select public service careers, an assertion that is supported by evidence of different levels of PSM between the public and private sectors (Houston 2000; Rainey 1982; Wittmer 1991). Having joined an organization, members with high levels of PSM appear to contribute in positive ways: They are more willing to engage in whistle-blowing to protect the public interest (Brewer and Selden 1998); they exhibit higher levels of organizational commitment (Crewson 1997); they believe that their jobs are important, which, in turn, leads them to work harder (Wright 2003); they are more likely to be high performers and enjoy higher job satisfaction; and they are less likely to leave their jobs (Naff and Crum 1999).3

In relation to the motivation literature, Perry (2000) asserts the importance of PSM as an alternative to rational and self-interested theories of motivation, which tend to focus on pecuniary rewards. It is also possible to illustrate how PSM can shape beliefs and behavioral outcomes. Thus far, research on the sources of PSM has pointed to institutions, with Perry focusing particularly on the role of sociohistorical institutions. Earlier work (Perry 1997) confirms the influence of education, family, and religion in shaping PSM. The next section further investigates Perry's process theory of PSM and our contribution to it.

Extending Public Service Motivation Theory: The Role of Organizations

Perry's (2000) process theory of PSM offers the most significant theoretical development in the topic since Perry and Wise (1990). The theory argues that individual behavior is not just the product of rational, self-interested choices but is rooted in normative and affective motives as well. Simply studying motivation from a rational, incentive-driven perspective provides only a partial understanding of motivation. We also need to study the social processes that shape individuals' normative beliefs and emotional understandings of the world. Similar to Perry (1997, 2000), our analysis shares a focus on the institutional shapers of individual beliefs and behavior, but, rather than focus on sociohistorical institutions, we examine organizational institutions. Indeed, Perry explicitly calls for such a study: "Investigation of organizational influences should seek to assess the effects of organizational experiences and policies on the public service motivation of members over time" (1997, 193).

Perry (2000) points to March and Olsen's (1989) work on institutions as a theoretical basis for asserting that institutions foster a logic of appropriateness in the minds of individuals-rather than a more rationalchoice logic of consequentiality-which causes them to develop PSM. March and Olsen define institutions as "collections of interrelated rules and routines that define appropriate action in terms of relations between roles and situations" (1989, 21).4 This broad definition of institutions not only conforms to the idea of sociohistorical institutions-March and Olsen explicitly consider the role of education and socialization-but also is consistent with the concept of organizational institutions. The emphasis on rules and routines suggests that both formally mandated and informal aspects of organizations provide institutional influences.5

Our key theoretical contribution to Perry's work is to extend the understanding of institutions that shape PSM to include organizational institutions. We argue that work-related rules and norms are organizational institutions that shape not only the administrative behavior of public servants but also the basic attitudes that these actors hold about the value of public service.6 Our theoretical model, therefore, does not seek to directly contradict Perry's theory but rather to test whether one aspect of that theory-the work environment-deserves closer attention as a significant predictor of employee beliefs. Essentially, we argue that PSM may be formed by sociohistorical factors before employees enter the organization, but it will also be influenced by the organizational environment in which employees find themselves.7

Our approach is consistent with the theoretical premises that Perry (2000) places at the heart of PSM theory: that rational, normative, and affective processes motivate humans; that people are motivated by their own self-concept; that preferences or values should be endogenous to any theory of motivation; and that preferences are learned in social processes. Public organizations are not just a means to produce outputs; they are also social institutions in which individuals interact and influence each other in the context of a structured environment.8 Conformity to organizational norms is likely a clear instance of the endogenous nature of individual preferences. March and Olsen (1989) observe that expectations, preferences, experiences, and interpretations of the actions of others are all constructed within institutions. Actors construct beliefs and behaviors based on what is appropriate in light of their environment and the norms of behavior of those around them. Therefore, we expect that public employees' beliefs about public service are at least partly influenced by the nature of the organizations they are a part of.

Sociohistorical Context

Perry (2000) argues that PSM depends on how individuals are socialized through sociohistorical institutions-primarily parental relations, religion, observational learning and modeling during the course of their lives, education, and professional training. Perry (1997) tested the effect of some of these factors on five dependent variables: a composite measure of PSM and four subscales (attraction to policy making, commitment to public interest/civic duty, compassion, and self-sacrifice). In his 1997 analysis, Perry found that religion had a mixed impact on PSM, with church involvement being negatively related to PSM and closeness to God being positively related to PSM. A third religion variable, religious worldview, had no significant impact in either direction. He found similarly mixed results for parental relations: The extent to which respondents had learned altruistic or helping behavior from their parents had a strong positive effect on overall PSM and civic duty in particular. The degree to which respondents had good relations with at least one parent did not have a strong impact on PSM.

Perry (1997) found that education had a significant positive relationship with his overall measure of PSM and two subscales, commitment to public interest/ civic duty and compassion. In the 1997 model, education was included as a demographic control, but in formulating his process theory of PSM, Perry recognized the primary role of education in shaping beliefs, finding that the level of education was significantly and positively related to the overall PSM scale and all of the subscales, with the exception of compassion. This leads to our first hypothesis:

H^sub 1^: Level of education is positively related to PSM.

The second aspect of education outlined by Perry is professional identification through membership and active involvement in a professional organization. To a greater degree than level of education, which is typically completed prior to joining an organization, professional membership is a type of socialization that parallels the employee's experience in the organization. Professional organizations seek to help their members make sense of and succeed in their organizational environments. Therefore, we expect membership in professional organizations to have a strong influence on PSM.

Perry (1997) confirms the strength of this influence, but the direction of the relationship remains unclear. Although he had hypothesized that professional identification socializes an individual to ethical behavior-and therefore should be positively related to PSM-Perry found that it had a mixed effect on PSM. Overall, it had no significant relationship to the composite PSM scale; was negatively and significantly related to attraction to policy making; was positively and significantly associated with commitment to public interest/civic duty and self-sacrifice; and had no significant relationship with compassion. Perry argues that these are among the most interesting of his findings, raising questions about a conflict between professional values and a tolerance for politics. Given the relevance of these mixed findings, we retest them here without specifying the direction of the relationship between professional membership and PSM:

H^sub 2^: Membership in a professional society affects an employees PSM.

Organizational Institutions

To examine organizational institutions, we survey employees' perceptions of their work environments in the areas of culture, hierarchical authority, red tape, and reform orientation. We also test the effects of length of organizational membership.

As Barnard (1938) observes, there are a variety of formal and informal mechanisms through which organizations may shape the beliefs and behavior of their members. Any description of informal institutions inevitably brings us to the concept of culture.

The influence of organizational norms on beliefs and behavior is widely asserted in the organizational culture literature. Organizational culture shapes beliefs and practices (Kaufman 1960; Schein 1992) and other aspects of administrative behavior, including patterns of interorganizational interaction and reform (Ban 1995), implementation (Ginger 1998), the potential for learning (Mahler 1997), and entrepreneurship (Moon 1999).

To examine the role of culture, we employ Quinn and Kimberly's (1984) categorization of distinct value types: group, developmental, hierarchical, and rational cultures. Group cultures are associated with a focus on people rather than the organization, flexibility rather than control, employee cohesion, and morale. Developmental cultures are associated with a focus on the organization, flexibility, adaptability and readiness, growth, and resource acquisition. Hierarchical cultures tend to focus on people, control, management of information and communication, and organizational stability. Finally, rational cultures are associated with organizational goals, control, planning, goal setting, production, and efficiency. All organizations are likely to exhibit these types to varying degrees rather than simply fall into one type or another (Zammuto and Krakower 1991).

Therefore, we test the influence of the presence of each type of organizational culture on PSM. Given the difficulty of measuring culture-and the absence of discussion of organizational culture in previous work on PSM-our proposals here are clearly exploratory, and we do not specify the direction of the relationship between culture and PSM, with one exception. Given that hierarchical cultures tend to emphasize rule-based control of employees (like traditional bureaucracies) and bureaucratic personality (Merton 1940), we expect hierarchical culture to be negatively associated with PSM:

H^sub 3^: Organizational culture affects an employee's PSM.

H^sub 4^: Employees who experience a hierarchical culture have lower levels of PSM.

The definition of red tape offered by Bozeman-"rules, regulations, and procedures that remain in force and entail a compliance burden, but do not advance the legitimate purposes the rules were intended to serve" (2000, 12)-underscores the conflict between red tape and the emphasis on actively serving the public interest that characterizes PSM beliefs. Early work (e.g., Goodsell 1994; Kaufman 1977) tended to offer a spirited defense of red tape as a "procedural safeguard" in the public sector without specifying what was meant by red tape, thus limiting further research on the topic. Recent work by Bozeman and colleagues (e.g., Bozeman 1993, 2000; Bozeman and Scott 1996; Pandey and Kingsley 2000; Pandey and Scott 2002; Pandey and Welch 2005; Rainey, Pandey, and Bozeman 1995) has provided clearer conceptual and measurement specifications for the red tape concept. This definition more closely matches the perceptions of individual practitioners: Not all formal rules are red tape, just those that frustrate employees in achieving their goals.

Examinations of the relationship between red tape and individual beliefs detect a greater tolerance for red tape among employees with lower job satisfaction, greater personal alienation, and higher insecurity, pessimism, and mistrust (Bozeman and Rainey 1998; DeHart-Davis and Pandey 2005; Pandey and Kingsley 2000; Rainey, Pandey, and Bozeman 1995). These characteristics are at odds with the profile of employees with high levels of PSM, who are characterized by higher levels of performance, achievement, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction (Brewer and Selden 1998; Crewson 1997; Perry and Wise 199O).9 Indeed, in explaining lower job involvement on the part of public employees compared to their private sector counterparts, Buchanan (1975) points to employee frustration with red tape as the primary cause. Therefore, we expect that employees who perceive themselves as working in an organization dominated by red tape will have lower levels of PSM:

H^sub 5^: Employees who experience red tape have lower levels of PSM.

If public sector stereotypes such as bureaucratic personality and entrenched red tape are indeed responsible for reducing PSM, we expect that reform efforts directly targeted at battling these maladies will improve PSM. Recent reform efforts falling under the banner of the reinvention movement have adopted this approach. Reinvention explicitly assumes that employees wish to provide valuable public services and, with the removal of red tape and constraints, can be more effective in doing so (Gore 1993; Moynihan 2006). To public managers, the adoption of reforms communicates that leaders are intent on pursuing change that allows workers to do their jobs effectively (e.g., Dilulio 1990). A reformist orientation, therefore, is likely to reduce employee cynicism about existing barriers to public service and give employees hope for greater freedom to operate in a way that is consistent with their conception of public service. Naff and Crum (1999) have already found a relationship between PSM and reinvention efforts at the federal level, and we extend this research to the state level:

H^sub 6^: Employees who experience employeefriendly organizational reforms that seek to cut red tape and empower employees display higher levels of PSM.

Increased levels of hierarchy are associated with many of the effects of red tape, frustrating the ability to achieve goals, and therefore might be expected to have a similarly negative effect on employee outcomes. However, we control for the primary negative effects of hierarchy through the inclusion of a red tape variable and a measure of hierarchical culture based on an emphasis of formal rules and procedures. Controlling for the dysfunctional aspects of hierarchy prompts us to consider its functional purposes and the reason why it has persisted. Wildavsky (1990) points to a tendency in public administration scholarship toward a distaste for hierarchy-in part because of the inequality it invokes-while taking for granted its virtues of stability, continuity, and predictability. Hierarchical levels provide a means to manage the complexity of large organizations, enabling managers to undertake actions that are consistent with task complexity and the time span required (Jaques 1990). Levels of hierarchy also provide a way to manage accountability in a structured fashion. These issues are likely to be of major concern for our respondents-mid-level to senior-level managers-as they attempt to successfully contribute to the delivery of public services. By contrast, reformers who criticize hierarchical levels tend to focus on the perspective of frontline workers and urge the removal of mid-level managers as a means of reducing hierarchy and its associated problems (Gore 1993). Given the competing claims about the benefit of hierarchy, we propose the following:

H^sub 7^: The number of hierarchical levels in an organization affects employee levels of PSM.

Finally, we test the impact of length of organizational membership on PSM. It has been argued that over time, organizational loyalty and commitment are strengthened as a result of organizational membership (Romzek 1990). Crewson (1997) found that seniority and pay grade, both correlates of length of organizational membership, had a positive relationship to organizational commitment. However, there are conflicting arguments about the effect of length of employment on PSM. A basic assumption of most reforms is that bureaucratic forms of government sap the enthusiasm of well-meaning workers (Gore 1993). Merton (1940) argues that bureaucratic organizations lead employees to adopt a bureaucratic personality that is characterized by goal displacement as rule observance replaces the original purposes of the organization. For most public positions-and certainly health and human services-the basic goal of helping citizens is consistent with PSM. However, from employees' perspective, these goals may become less clear the longer they remain with the organization because they must adapt their everyday work patterns to the demands of the bureaucracy, becoming part of and directing management systems that are enmeshed in a web of rules and reporting requirements. In addition, employees may gradually recognize the ineffectiveness of the organization in achieving its goals, further undermining PSM. Members who joined an organization with a strong commitment to public service may find themselves increasingly frustrated as time passes, as their hopes to contribute are dashed (Romzek and Hendricks 1982). In short, length of organizational membership reflects the cumulative effects of being in a particular work environment over time, both good and bad. Given these conflicting arguments, we propose the following:

H^sub 8^: Length of organizational membership affects employee levels of PSM.

Demographic Controls

In addition to the foregoing variables, we employ a number of demographic controls: gender, age, and income. These controls led to some unexpected results in Perry's 1997 study, and consequently, there is value in seeking to replicate his findings. Perry found, at least in relation to commitment to public interest/ civic duty, that men were more likely to have higher levels of PSM than women. Contrary to one hypothesis, Perry found that higher levels of individual income were negatively associated with PSM among employees, particularly in terms of commitment to public interest/civic duty. He argues that this may be the result of a growing class separation between the wealthy and other classes, leading to a reduced sense of civic involvement on the part of wealthy individuals. Finally, he found that age had, as hypothesized, a positive impact on PSM, although it is not clear whether diis is the result of a generational difference between respondents or the different environments faced by respondents of different ages, given the inclusion of students in the survey. Our sample is made up exclusively of public employees, and therefore we can employ length of organizational membership as a variable, in addition to the age variable, to better understand the nature of this relationship.

Data, Methodology, and Measurement

The data for diis study were collected as part of Phase II of the National Administrative Studies Project (NASP-II) during 2002-03. The response rate for the survey was approximately 53 percent (274 responses). Additional detail on the data-collection process is included in appendix 1 and in Pandey (2003).

The theoretical population of interest for this study consisted of managers engaged in information management activities at state-level primary health and human service agencies. Consistent with Caudle (1990), we employed a broad definition of information management, including not only those who manage information systems applications but also managers involved in research and evaluation, managers dealing with public information and communication, and top-level program administrators. The average age of the managers we surveyed was almost 50 years, almost half were women, the average length of stay in the organization was more than 15 years, and the average salary was $50,000-$75,000 (see Table 1). This demographic description sounds more consistent with our expectations of a typical career manager in a health and human service agency, not the popular image of information technology staff as young men who frequently change employment. However, as with any survey of a particular group, caution should be exercised in generalizing study findings.

Measurement

This section discusses how we measured the more complex variables employed in this analysis. A full listing of the questions employed, the original source of these questions, and the Cronbach's alphas of the scales employed can be found in appendix 2.

The survey included three of Perry's four measures of PSM: attraction to policy making, commitment to public interest/civic duty, and compassion. As survey questions were being selected, a deliberate choice was made to exclude questions pertaining to the self-sacrifice dimension, largely because it was not included in the original conception of PSM and because of its conceptual similarity to and overlap with the compassion dimension. In constructing scales for each item, we used a selection of the Likert-scale items suggested by Perry (1996). In this analysis, we chose not to employ the compassion variable because of concerns over the internal consistency of the scale. The scale employed for this variable had a Cronbachs alpha of .40, below minimally acceptable standards. Perry (1996) reports alpha measures ranging from .69 to .74 for the PSM scales that he developed. The differences in the scale reliability report may be the result of a different group of respondents: We surveyed managers working in the public service in the areas of health and human services, whereas Perry administered his survey to a wider variety of respondents, including graduate and undergraduate students, university employees, public employees, and managers in different public organizations. Another explanation is that we employed only a subset of the compassion survey questions (four of the eight items in Perry's compassion scale), and the alpha is dependent on the number of items in the scale. For the attraction to public policy making scale, we employed all three items used by Perry, obtaining a Cronbach's alpha of .72. For the civic duty scale, we used four of the five items employed by Perry, resulting in a Cronbach's alpha of .67. Our overall PSM scale, made up of the attraction to public policy making and civic duty scales, had a Cronbach's alpha of .67.

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