Public Service Motivation Research: Achievements, Challenges, and Future Directions

2015/07/28 by James L. Perry, Wouter Vandenabeele · 265 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Engineering · Social Sciences · #Business #Computer science #Construct (python library) #Corporate governance #Dimension (graph theory) #Engineering #Extant taxon #Finance #Loyalty #Marketing #Nonprofit Sector and Volunteering #Political science #Politics #Public Policy and Administration Research #Public relations #Public sector #Public service #Public service motivation #Regulation and Compliance Studies #Sociology #Stock (firearms)

paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/puar.12430

published in Public Administration Review 75(5), 692-699 (Wiley)

openalex publication_date 2015/07/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

Abstract This article takes stock of public service motivation research to identify achievements, challenges, and an agenda for research to build on progress made since 1990. After enumerating achievements and challenges, the authors take stock of progress on extant proposals to strengthen research. In addition, several new proposals are offered, among them conducting more research on the disaggregated construct, developing grounded theory of public service motivation to understand contextual variations across cultures and political institutions, and improving current measures to better capture loyalty to governance regime as an institutional dimension of the public service motivation construct .

Citations

• Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving
• The Role of Organizations in Fostering Public Service Motivation

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Related

• PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF PUBLIC SERVICE MOTIVATION RESEARCH
• Revisiting the Motivational Bases of Public Service: Twenty Years of Research and an Agenda for the Future
• Investigating the Structure and Meaning of Public Service Motivation across Populations: Developing an International Instrument and Addressing Issues of Measurement Invariance
• Measuring Public Service Motivation: An Assessment of Construct Reliability and Validity
• Organizational Correlates of Public Service Motivation: A Meta-analysis of Two Decades of Empirical Research