The benefits of PSM: an oasis or a mirage? [WP]

Abstract

Scholarly interest in Public Service Motivation has yielded a vast amount of research explicating its benefits for public sector organizations; including increased employee job satisfaction, boosted individual performance, higher intention to stay with the organization, enhanced organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour. However, a closer inspection of the literature reveals mixed empirical evidence for each of these impacts of PSM. We perform a meta-analysis on each of these five impacts of PSM in order to explicate the divergence in the results of the extant literature. We find evidence of the existence of a true effect for PSM over negative outcomes, organisational commitment and organisational citizenship. In addition, we also find that contextual variables, legal origin and corruption of the country, along with the measurement related variables, affect each of the five relationships in a unique manner.