Revisiting the Motivational Bases of Public Service: Twenty Years of Research and an Agenda for the Future
2010/08/31 by James L. Perry, Annie Hondeghem, Lois Recascino Wise · 976 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Behavioural sciences #Business #Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior #Law #Marketing #Nonprofit Sector and Volunteering #Political science #Psychology #Public Policy and Administration Research #Public administration #Public relations #Public sector #Public service #Public service motivation #Scholarship #Service (business) #Social science #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1540-6210.2010.02196.x
published in Public Administration Review 70(5), 681-690 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2010/08/31 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
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.
Citations
Cited by
- Pulling the Levers: Transformational Leadership, Public Service Motivation, and Mission Valence
- Comparison of a Multidimensional to a Unidimensional Measure of Public Service Motivation: Predicting Work Attitudes
- Public Service Motivation, Prosocial Motivation and Altruism: Towards Disentanglement and Conceptual Clarity
- Which job attributes attract individuals high in public service motivation and self‐efficacy to a public service job?
- Corrupção no serviço público: fatores relacionados ao desengajamento moral e à cultura ética organizacional
- The Paradox of Meritocracy: System Justification and Inequality in Federal Agencies
- Investigating the Structure and Meaning of Public Service Motivation across Populations: Developing an International Instrument and Addressing Issues of Measurement Invariance
- How Does Public Service Motivation Among Teachers Affect Student Performance in Schools?
- Organizational Correlates of Public Service Motivation: A Meta-analysis of Two Decades of Empirical Research
- Individual Performance: From Common Source Bias to Institutionalized Assessment
- Cry the beloved administrative state: Predatory Kleptocracy and the Trumpian age of American public administration
- The interactive (moderating) effects of public service motivation: a systematic review
- Making citizens: The effects of attending a public versus a privately managed school on voter turnout
- What motivates public sector organisations to use blockchain?
- Bringing Public Virtue Back: How Does Ethical Leadership Impact Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Enforcement Style?
- The distinctiveness of public sector HRM: A four‐wave trend analysis
- The effects of implicit biases on real-life client discrimination among public officials
- What Does It Mean and Imply to be Public Service Motivated?
- Preferences for Careers in Public Work
- Getting Your Foot in the Door: The Impact of Public Sector Fellowships on Career Trajectories
- Digital Transformation Policy Combination and Government Governance Performance Improvement: Evidence from China
- How Transformational Leadership Supports Intrinsic Motivation and Public Service Motivation: The Mediating Role of Basic Need Satisfaction
- The Effectiveness of Monetary and Promotion Rewards in the Public Sector and the Moderating Effect of PSM (PSM-Reward Fit or PSM Crowding Out): A Survey Experiment
- Fostering Public Sector Employees’ Innovative Behavior: The Roles of Servant Leadership, Public Service Motivation, and Learning Goal Orientation
- Linking Transformational Leadership to Self-Efficacy, Extra-Role Behaviors, and Turnover Intentions in Public Agencies: The Mediating Role of Goal Clarity
- ADMINISTRATIVE LEADERSHIP THEORY: A REASSESSMENT AFTER 10 YEARS
- An Exploratory Study of Public Service Motivation and the Institutional–Occupational Model of the Military
- Public managers, drivers of ambidexterity in public service delivery. The perceived impact of red tape and PSM on ambidexterity
- Understanding the motivation and performance of community health volunteers involved in the delivery of health programmes in Kampala, Uganda: a realist evaluation protocol. [europepmc]
- Public service motivation as a mediator of the relationship between job stress and presenteeism: a cross-sectional study from Chinese public hospitals. [europepmc]
- Public Service Motivation and Turnover Intention: Testing the Mediating Effects of Job Attitudes. [europepmc]
- Explicit and Implicit Basic Human Motives, and Public Service Motivation. [europepmc]
- How does social support affect public service motivation of healthcare workers in China: the mediating effect of job stress. [europepmc]
- Working through the fog of a pandemic: Street-level policy entrepreneurship in times of crises. [europepmc]
- What Makes You a Whistleblower? A Multi-Country Field Study on the Determinants of the Intention to Report Wrongdoing. [europepmc]
- Red Tape and Community Workers' Proactive Behavior During COVID-19: Applying the Job Demands-Resources Model. [europepmc]
- Analysis of Evaluation Dimensions of Public Service Motivation of Chinese College Students-Qualitative Study Based on Grounded Theory. [europepmc]
- "Invalid busyness" behaviors of a few grassroots cadres: Evidence from normative explanation. [europepmc]
- How does leaders' information-sharing behavior affect subordinates' taking charge behavior in public sector? A moderated mediation effect. [europepmc]
- Can public service motivation increase work engagement?-A meta-analysis across cultures. [europepmc]
- How Does Public Service Motivation Affect the Proactive Service Behaviors of Grid Workers? A Study of Survey Evidence from Eastern China. [europepmc]
- The Impact of Perceived Overqualification on Workplace Procrastination: The Role of Public Service Motivation and Perceived Prosocial Impact. [europepmc]
- Mediators and moderators in voluntary turnover intention: a scoping review in the public service. [europepmc]
- The relationship between effort-reward imbalance and job satisfaction among primary care general practitioners in Gansu of China: the mediating role of public service motivation. [europepmc]
- How Organisational and Socio-Cultural Contexts Shape Healthcare Workers' Intrinsic, Prosocial, and Public Service Motivation in Africa: A Scoping Review. [europepmc]
- Uncovering latent profiles of multidimensional work attitudes: cross-cultural evidence from Poland and Vietnam. [europepmc]
Related