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Public Service Motivation in Public Administrations

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DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1401

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Public Service Motivation in Public Administrations

Wouter Vandenabeele & Carina Schott

Please cite as

Vandenabeele, W., & Schott, C. (2020, December 17). Public service motivation in public
administrations. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford University Press. doi:
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1401

Summary

This entry provides an overview of the state of the art on public service motivation (PSM)

research, which is the drive people have to contribute society. This concept, introduced in the

last few decades of the previous century, has gained a lot of momentum as it appeals to both

practitioners and scholars alike. The entry discusses its prominence and gives a review of the

concept, as well as of related concepts to create clear conceptual distinctions. Subsequently, it

takes stock of the research concerning antecedents and outcomes (both positive and negative

outcomes) to create an encompassing theoretical account. Next, applications of PSM are

furnished on the basis of the typology developed by Paarlberg (2008) et al. Finally, some

current issues are discussed, including its institutional or cultural dependency, measurement

and its conceptual nature. We conclude by stating that research is continuously growing and

that one should judge the concept on its merits, neither being a silver bullet, nor a redundant

concept, but rather one piece in the puzzle of managing government and governance.
Keywords: Motivation, measurement, institutions, prosocial, identity

Introduction

Notwithstanding a great deal of available research, the question of what motivates people to

do their job and to perform well remains a ‘big question’ in public management research

(Perry and Hondeghem, 2008). As motivated people are the key assets of public

organizations, we need to understand what drives civil servants and what hinders them in

their daily work. Especially in times of demographic changes that result in a dwindling labor

supply and increased competition among employers the provision of public service and the

quality hereof come under pressure if the workforce is not highly motivated. A specific type

of motivation that continues to attract both attention from scholars and practitioners across

the world is that of public service motivation (PSM) (Ritz, Brewer and Neumann 2016),

which refers to “an individual’s orientation to delivering services to people with a purpose to

do good for others and society” (p. vii). Interest in the concept is easy to understand as

recently published meta-analyses provide strong evidence of PSM being associated with

work-related outcomes, such as public sector attraction (Asseburg and Homberg 2018) and

job satisfaction (Homberg, McCarthy and Tabvuma 2015).

However, research on PSM is not undisputed. Vandenabeele, Brewer and Ritz (2014) even

argue that the research community is dived in “‘believers’ and ‘non-believer’; those who

think public service motivation is a crucial variable in managing public sector organizations,

and those who think it is a far-fetched, idealistic concept with little relationship to the harsh

reality of public management practice” (p. 779). For example Bozeman and Su (2015)

criticize that it is not clear from the literature how PSM is different from or related to the

concept of altruism and that most of the practical recommendations provided in PSM studies
are not actionable (Ritz et al 2016:421). This chapter aims to address these critical voices by

providing a state of the art over view of PSM research. The chapter is structures as follows.

We start with explaining what PSM is and how the concept can be distinguished conceptually

from related concepts. In section 2 we elaborate on the PSM theory. In particular, we

summarize how PSM can be stimulated (antecedents) at different levels of analyses and what

the outcomes of PSM are. Regarding the outcomes of PSM we take a balanced approaches.

This means we do not only focus on the positive outcomes of PSM, but we also recognize

that that concept may have a “dark side”. After that we demonstrate that PSM is a construct

of practice by discussing five actual cases (section 3). In section 4, we elaborate on three

interrelated issues that continue to dominate PSM research. We call them measurement

issues, cultural issues and identity issues. The chapter ends with some concluding remarks.

What is Public Service Motivation?

Public service motivation (PSM) refers to one’s drive to contribute to society in it broadest

sense (Perry and Hondeghem 2008). It is the motivation of those who value highly spending

their energy or resources to make society a better place – for any given value of better. The

concept was first coined by Rainey (1982), who, when reviewing a study by Buchanan (1975)

on differences between public and private managers, observed that ‘when asked […] about

public service, the public managers rate it more highly than private managers (289)’.

Subsequently, this cognizance was attributed to the – then – neologism public service

motivation. It was however only formalized later on by Perry and Wise (1990), who defined

it as ‘the individual predisposition to respond to motives grounded primarily or unique in

public institutions (386).

Following this publication, a number of related or overlapping definitions, catering different

needs, appeared in the academic literature. Brewer and Selden (1998) stuck very closely to

the empirical observation of Rainey, when describing it as ‘the motivational force that

induces individuals to perform meaningful public service (417), in order to highlight the idea

that it was not limited to public sector employees. Rainey and Steinbauer (1999) again

broadened the original idea, when they defined it as the ‘general altruistic motivation to

serve the interests of a community of people, a state, a nation, or humankind (23)’.

Vandenabeele (2007) tried to encompass these ideas and bring together the various

definitions by developing an overarching definition : ‘the belief, values and attitudes that go

beyond self-interest and organizational interest, that concern the interest of a larger political

entity and that motivate individuals to act accordingly whenever appropriate (547)’. In this

definition he no just tried to subsume the various existing ideas about public service

motivation and what it should entail, but also some closely related, often regional concepts

from the field of public administration such as ‘l’éthique du bien commun’ (Chanlat 2003) or

the public service ethos (Pratchett and Wingfield 1996).

When conceiving the idea of public service motivation, Rainey (1982) already hinted to the

multi-faceted nature of public service motivation and over the course of years, multiple ways

of bringing dimensionality into the concept were entered to the debate. Perry (1996) started

out by conceiving six theoretical dimensions which were subsequently reduced to four

empirical dimensions, namely interest in politics and policy-making, commitment to the

public interest and civic duty, compassion and self-sacrifice. Following this first step into the

direction of dimensionality , various students of public service motivation increased or

reduced the number of dimensions (Vandenabeele 2008; Giauque et al 2011; Kim et al 2013).

One type of exercises in this fashion would be based on the consideration that the public

values that are considered to be the institutional basis of which public service motivation is
the individual level mirror-concept are deemed to be different across various settings. Hence,

as the institutional basis differs, so should do individual-level concept. Therefore, individual

dimensions are added or removed depending on the particular context or environment in

which the concept is applied. Despite valiant efforts (Kim and Vandenabeele 2010; Kim et al

2013), no empirically supported universal dimensional structure based on values has been

detected so far (a result that by no means indicates that public service motivation is not

universally applicable). Another way of bringing dimensionality to the concept has been the

approach advocated of grouping dimensions based on types of values. Theoretically, Perry

and Wise (1990) have distinguished three bases of public service motivation or motives,

namely rational, norm-based and affective. However, putting empirical dimensions into these

categories has not been very successful as the original Perry 1996 conceptualization does not

match with these on a one to one basis and the construct validity seems rather low. However,

van Witteloostuijn and colleagues (2017) have developed this further and distinguish

between affective and non-affective motives of PSM, based on the theory of reasoned action

(Ajzen and Fishbein 1980). This strategy seems to some extent promising as the construct

validity in terms of indentifying antecedents of these groups shows better results (Van

witteloostuijn et al 2017; Ripoll 2019). However, more evidence is needed, and in particular

evidence that is based better developed theoretical foundations.

Despite the call by Perry and Vandenabeele (2015) for ‘unbundling’ public service

motivation and to continue studying public service motivation as a multi-facetted concept, it

has oftentimes been treated as a singular concept (Kim 2017). Numerous authors have

addressed public service motivation from a homogenous rather than a multi-facetted

perspective. This was either due to lack of conceptual clarity of the distinction between

dimensions or due to empirical lack of discriminant validity as the correlation between

dimensions is simply too high, or a combination of both. Also the availability of the MSBP5
measure of public service motivation in public databases (Naff and Crum 1999) has helped

this perspective. Within this perspective, two main strands can be distinguished, being the

aggregate and the global approach. The aggregate approach has been the most dominant way,

being a simple unweighted sum of the individual dimensions of proxies thereof. The global

approach is more theoretically underpinned, claiming there is an overarching or global idea of

public service motivation which is related to all dimensions and which can be measured

independently from the dimensions (this is similar to the approach for global job satisfaction,

see Ironson et al). However, although more promising, little empirical research is currently

available.

Given this heterogenous set of ideas about what public service motivation actually entails, it

should not come as a surprise that the meaning concept is sometimes stretched to or confused

with other concepts. Therefore, it is important to distinguish it from other, related concepts

such as altruism, intrinsic motivation or pro-social motivation.

The link with altruism is easily made, given that scholars often refer to the idea of altruism

either in the definition – ‘general altruistic motivation (Rainey and Steinbauer 1999 : 23)’ or

in their characterization of the concept – ‘the theory is principally based on altruistic motives

(Brewer and Selden 1998: 417)’. Although none of these are equating public service

motivation to altruism, to casual observers this can easily slide from one to the other.

According to Schott et al (2019), the main distinction between public service motivation and

altruism lies in the criterion of different states of human action. This entails the distinction

between intention or motive on the one hand and actual behavior at the other hand as these

present two different states of human actions (Schott et al 2019). Although many definitions

of altruism refer to either the actual behavior as well as the motives that propel the behavior

(or even both), Schott an colleagues argue that altruism should be considered as a behavior

rather than a motive. Therefore the definition of Wilson (1975), who defines altruism as ‘self-
destructive behavior performed for the benefit of others (578)’ would be appropriate. Here,

there is a clear link with behavior which can consequently be distinguished from motivation.

Other concepts that are sometimes are intrinsic motivation or pro-social motivation. Houston

states public service motivation ‘is a valuing of intrinsic work motives more highly than

extrinsic ones (2011 : 762)’ and likewise Steijn claims ‘it is as a specific form of ‘‘intrinsic

motivation’’ (2008 : 14)’. Although both nuance later on these broad claims – Houston refers

to public service motivation as obligation based intrinsic motivation whereas Steijn refers to

it as a socio-centric intrinsic work orientation, there may be some need for further

discrimination. To this end, Schott et al (2019) apply additional criteria referring to the target

audience or beneficiaries.

On one the hand there is the distinction between self-oriented or other-oriented motivation in

term of who will mainly benefit from motivation to perform such behaviors. As can be

derived from the definition of intrinsic motivation, defined ‘as the doing of an activity for its

inherent satisfactions rather than for some separable consequence (Ryan and Deci 2000: 56)’,

and as stated by Grant (2008), intrinsic motivation is mainly self-oriented (or hedonistic).

Therefore, intrinsic motivation is not a substitute for public service motivation, nor is it an

essential part of it.

Pro-social motivation ‘takes a eudaimonic perspective by emphasizing meaning and purpose

as drivers of effort […]effort is based on a desire to benefit others (Grant 2008: 49)’. This

definition largely overlaps with altruism according to Batson and Shaw (1991) who define it

as ‘ a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another's welfare (108)’.

According to these definitions, pro-social motivation takes the perspective of the other. When

putting this next to the definitions of public service motivation provided so far, Rainey and

Steinbauer (1999) as well as Vandenabeele (2007), and more implicitly – the reference to
public institutions or public service – with the definitions of Perry and Wise (1990) and

Brewer and Selden (1998), all refer to ‘the other’. Therefore, public service motivation can be

linked with pro-social motivation. This has been aptly illustrated by Wright et al (2013), who

find considerable overlap (to the extent of empirical equivalence) between measures of public

service motivation and general pro-social motivation, as opposed to Jensen and Andersen

(2015), who find differential effects of individual user-orientation (as an instance of pro-

social motivation) and public service motivation.

In order to disentangle this matter of imbrication of concepts and obtain conceptual

discrimination, Schott et al (2019) come up with last criterion, the distinction between clearly

identified or non-anonymous beneficiaries and society at large as a beneficiary – being

largely unidentified. Although Grant and Berg (2011) explain that beneficiaries of pro-social

motivation can vary to the extent that it can be either individuals groups or larger collectives

such as nations or societies, it is nevertheless more likely that will be some kind of

identification in these beneficiaries as the relationship with these beneficiaries is important in

terms of feedback and appreciation (Grant 2009). Therefore, one cannot equal public service

motivation with pro-social motivation, since the latter will have a broader scope in terms of

beneficiaries (both identified and unidentified), whereas the former is mainly aimed at

unidentified (or society as a beneficiary.

Based on these criteria, public service motivation can be indisputably be distinguished from

related concepts.

PSM Theory: What are its Antecedents and Outcomes?

Now that that we have clarified what public service motivation is an how the concept is

different from and similar to related concepts, we turn to the outcomes of public service
motivation and the question of how this specific type of motivation can be enhanced. Ritz,

Brewer and Neumann (2016) summarize the extensive research efforts testing potential

antecedents and outcomes of public service motivation in an systematic literature review.

This review covers a period of almost 25 years, beginning with the seminal article by Perry

and Wise in 1990 and ending in 2014. An sharp increase in the number of publications in this

period of time illustrates an growing interest in public service motivation as research topic.

As for both antecedents and outcomes of public service motivation several broad categories

cane be identified. However, it needs to be noted that we are often not allowed to speak of

causal relationships, because longitudinal and experimental research is still scare. Put

differently, problems of endogeneity continue to exist meaning that we are not allowed to

draw strong conclusions about causal directions (Vandenabeele, Brewer & Ritz 2014).

The antecedents of public service motivation can broadly be categorized into three different

levels of analysis: individual, organizational and socio-historical or institutional. At

individual level, personal and socio-demographic attributes have been studied. For example,

aggregated results suggest that women tend to have higher levels of public service motivation

than men, and that public service motivation increases with growing age and higher job

grades (Ritz et al. 2016). Organizational and job tenure, in contrast, are not consistently found

to be related to public service motivation. While some scholars found decreasing levels of

public service motivation after joy entry (e.g., Kjeldsen Jacobsen 2013; Schott, Steen & Van

Kleef 2019) others found that after starting work in the public sector employees show an

increased level of public service motivation for a period of at least 5 years (Georgellis, Iossa

& Tabvuma 2011). At organizational level, there is empirical evidence that leadership fosters

public service motivation. In particular, Wright, Moynihan and Pandey (2012) conclude that

transformational leadership is an organizational factor related to increased levels of public

service motivation. Jensen and Bro (2018) continued on this line of research and found that
the relationships between transformational leadership public service motivation is mediated

by the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and

relatedness. Another often studies organizational antecedent of public service motivation are

bundles of HR practices. The results of a meta-analysis on the relationship between public

service motivation and HR practices suggest that intrinsic HR practices, such as job

enrichment, participation and individual appraisal show positive and significant effects on

PSM, while no such association was found for extrinsic HR practices, such as performance

appraisal and job security (Homberg & Vogel 2016). The most frequently studied antecedents

of public service motivation fall into the category of institutional or socio-historical

antecedents. Place of employment (e.g., comparing public sector work to private sector work)

and education are two of the most frequently studied antecedents of public service

motivation. Aggregated results suggest that these two antecedents are significant predictors of

elevated levels of public service motivation (Ritz et al. 2016). Another institutional source of

public service motivation is religiousness. On the basis of a mixed method study Perry,

Brudney, Coursey and Littlepage (2008) conclude that religious activity is an strong predictor

of public service motivation. Together these findings of the institutional antecedents of public

service motivation suggest that the process of socialization seems to be key mechanism to

explain changing levels of public service motivation. By means of mechanisms such as

socialization, social identification, cultural preferences, and social learning, public

institutional logics are transmitted and individuals “acquire a new social identity as member

of the institution” (Perry and Vandenabeele, 2008, p.60).

Regarding the outcomes of public service motivation we see a shift from a focus on primarily

self-reported and positive work-related outcomes in the beginning years of public service

motivation research toward research trying to identify behavioral outcomes and also

recognizing that public service motivation may have a ‘dark side’. Examples of these work-
related outcomes are job-satisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational and

individual performance, and organizational citizenship behavior. Aggregated results of the

systematic literature by Ritz et al. (2016) suggest that these outcomes are significantly and

positively associated with public service motivation. Strong support for public service

motivation being an important facet in enhancing the success of public organizations is also

provided by Homberg, McCarthy and Tabvuma (2015) who conducted a meta-analysis on 28

separate studies assessing the relationship between public service motivation and job

satisfaction. The theoretical explanation for the positive effects of public service most

frequently discussed in the literature is related to the idea of person-environment fit (Kristof

1996). Highly public service motivated individuals are expected to perform well and to feel

satisfied, as they are working to provide services they perceive as meaningful; and public

sector organizations are assumed to be the place where socially meaningful work can be

realized. Put differently, the individual values and the values of public sector organizations

are assumed to ‘fit’, which has positive consequences, such as more job satisfaction, higher

performance and the willingness to engage in organizational citizenship behavior.

However, this line reasoning has also been criticized. For example Wright and Pandey

(2008) point out that just because public organizations agencies have the possibility to

provide individuals with opportunities to act upon their PSM, there is no guarantee that they

actually will do. Building upon this argument researcher have started to investigate ‘dark

sides’ of public service motivation in 2012. The central argument of this line of research is

that if public-service motivated individuals are hindered to act upon their motivation in

practice they may experience feelings of stress, dissatisfaction, lower physical well-being,

and even bourn-out. Empirical studies found evidence for these ‘dark sides’ of public service

motivation (for an overview see Schott and Ritz 2017) .

Case of PSM in Practice

Above all, public service motivation is a construct of practice. it can be applied in and outside

organizations in various ways. Paarlberg et al (2008) have developed that should enable

public organizations to foster and harness public service motivation to their benefit. They

identified five key-strategies to achieve this objective. Below, we will display five brief cases

that illustrate each of the strategies.

The most self-evident case concerns recruitment, in which public service motivation has been

oftentimes applied. Around 2000, the Dutch government realized that it was heading for a

possible labor supply shortage and it decided that it should distinguish itself from private

sector employers in the process of engaging more and better qualified entrants. They choose

to do so by staging a campaign ‘Werken voor het Rijk (working for government)‘. Important

in that campaign were advertisements in which providing solutions societal issues like

healthcare of youngsters or land use – windmills and kangaroos – were associated with public

sector jobs. Almost 20 years later, the strategy is still maintained as there is still a recruitment

website with the same name which provides job offers in government and links these to

testimonials of incumbents that stress the societal value-added in those occupations.

Another strategy identified by Paarlberg et al is creating purpose in a job in order to harness

public service motivation. This was nicely demonstrated by Belle (2013), who set up a field

experiment in which hospital nurses were asked to contribute voluntarily to an aid-project by

packing surgical after-hours to be sent to war zones. By means of self-persuasion techniques

– in this case reflecting and writing on how they would contribute and looking for new

volunteers – he aimed to increase the significance of the job these nurse were doing. In doing

so, he succeeded not only in increasing reported levels of public service motivation, but also

in increasing performance, there both fostering and harnessing public service motivation.
A third strategy that would enable to capitalize on the potential of public service motivation

is creating a supportive work environment. An example of this could be put to practice is

provided by some senior managers in Belgium, working at the Flemish government. In line

with prevailing new public management ideas, Flemish government had organization-wide

adopted the principle of bonuses (‘functioneringstoelage’) that could amount up to 15 % of

the annual salary. However, given the anticipated crowding-out effect that would cause

autonomous types of motivation (for example public service motivation) to give way and be

replaced by more controlled types of motivation, given the anticipated problems in teams

caused by discretionary character of the bonus and given the difficulty in assessing

performance, some senior managers developed a workaround. In this system there was an

informal rotation system in which a person in a team would be attributed the bonus and could

not receive it again in the following years until all other team members got the reward in the

subsequent years (so person A got it in year 1, person B in year 2, person B in year 3 etc…).

This informal system would ensure fit with the longer term perspective of salary that usually

is associated with public service motivation and therefore would avoid crowding-out.

A fourth strategy put forward by Paarlberg et al is to integrate public service in the mission

and strategy. An example of this can be found in a group of primary schools in Belgium that

were embarking on a strategic exercise to reorganize their operation. Instead of focusing on

typical educational outputs such as test scores, the management and board choose to go by a

mission that was based on values related to all the stakeholders involved in the teaching

process, hence making it more ‘public’ in nature. In doing so, they could make public service

motivation a core variable in the value-chain, measure it annually in their satisfaction surveys

and evaluate its impact on various processes and outputs that were deemed crucial to obtain

their strategic goal.

A final strategy that is voiced by Paarlberg et al is creating legitimacy of public service in

society. A prime example is the speech by John Glenn, former astronaut and senator. In the

final debate of the democratic primary campaign for the senate elections in 1974, John Glenn

rebutted Howard Metzenbaum – who was a self-made millionaire – and his claim that John

Glenn never held a proper job by stating that the job he and his fellow service-men held was

far more important than any other job. This was a turning point in the campaign – and Glenn

went on to the become a senator – but more importantly, it was an example of the positive

framing and creating legitimacy of public service (Glenn and Taylor 1999).

Current Debates or Issues

After showing the relevance of PSM for practice we want to highlight three remaining issues

that continue to dominate discussions in PSM literature. We start we the interrelated

discussion of measurement and cultural issues. After that we consider the question of whether

PSM is a motivation of an identity.

Since Perry (1996) proposed a measurement instrument more than 20 years ago, many efforts

have been made to validate it across different countries and cultures (e.g., Vandenabele 2008,

Giauque et al 2011, Kim et al. 2013). However, to this day there is not one single generally

accepted way to measure the concept of PSM, but researcher continue to use different

instruments. This presents a threat to the comparability of research findings; i.e. empirical

analyses are not fully comparably across studies. The difficulty to develop asingle valid

instrument of PSM relates to the fact that the concept is institutionally dependent. Using the

very same instrument in countries with different institutional traditions may therefore mean

that we not measure exactly the same concept. To complicate things further, there are

different degrees of comparability and similarity. Based on measurement theory and in

particular the idea of measurement invariance (Meredith 1993; Van den Berg and Lance

2000), different nested levels of invariance exist. The least demanding would be at the

configural level, meaning that the same items of a measure fall in in similar dimensions or

sub-dimensions. This kind of invariance would enable to make ‘conceptual’ comparisons.

Metric invariance requires more strict assumptions, namely that factor loadings of these items

are sufficiently similar (on top of the requirement of configural invariance). This level of

invariance would enable to make meaningful comparisons based on a regression model, in

which PSM would be either the dependent or independent variable. If one would like to

compare the actual aggregated scores, scalar invariance would be required, which is even

more strict as it requires also intercepts of factor scores to be equal (again added to the

requirement of metric invariance). Language seems to play an important role in this process,

as Kim et al (2013) could demonstrate configural invariance for all countries in an invariance

study, but only metric invariance for English speaking countries. Outside the Angelo-

American context, even in countries where the general PSM concept has been demonstrated

to exist, differences exist in the concept’s underlying sub-dimensions (Van der Wal 2015). As

a consequence the validity of research findings in these contexts can be questioned, unless a

validation process has taken place. This also raises additional questions about the

comparability of empirical results across cultural borders, which is an issue that should be

considered with the utmost care, awaiting further evidence. The same most likely goes for

invariance questions related to other types of distinctions such as gender, type of

employment, age groups or religion. .

On way to overcome these challenges (at least to a certain degree) is to use

unidimensional measurement instruments consisting of single items or short multi-item scales

(c.f. Houston 2011, Bellé 2013), as these are probably less likely subject to variance. This

brings in a second issue, the difference between multi-dimensional and uni-dimensional

measures of public service motivation. Research by Wright, Christensen and Pandey (2013)

and Kim (2017) suggest that differences between uni- and multidimensional measurement

instruments of PSM are not significant when it comes to predicting PSM and when PSM is

studied as an independent variable. Particularly researchers who are interested in the

overarching meaning of PSM – PSM as ‘an individual’s orientation to delivering service to

people with the purpose of doing good for others and society’ (Perry and Hondeghem 2009:

6) – may therefore benefit from using these shorter and unidimensional scales. Nevertheless,

there may be still good reasons to resort to using multi-dimensional measures (Perry and

Vandenabeele 2015). However, as with the measurement invariance, this issue also awaits

more evidence.

A third and final issue is more conceptual in nature as it refers to the question of

whether PSM is an actual motivation or rather an identity. In the former case, it would refer

to some kind of energy that is drives behavior (pointing to a famous definition of Madsen

1974), whereas in the latter case, it is part of a bigger motivational process of which it is the

most important component (which is more pointing to a definition of Heckhausen (1991). In

the former case, we would be able to measure the energy as the degree of motivation. In the

case of an identity, motivation would be a product of the interaction and the environment.

Conceptually, both cases are valid. However, when looking at how PSM has been

operationalized, question mostly bear on the ideas of values, of what is important or on how

one sees him or herself. This points to the idea of (institutional) roles and identities, rather

than to a certain level of energy. Moreover, when looking at how PSM has been

conceptualized, in the definitions by Perry and Wise (1990), Rainey and Steinbauer (1999) or

Vandenabeele (2007), all of these definitions clearly refer to the idea of institutions. Given

that the theory of PSM also emphasizes the role of context and environment, it seems that
how it is conceptualized currently pertains more to the idea of identity than to the idea of

motivation.

Concluding Remarks

PSM has been one of the few endogenous concepts that has been developed within the

boundaries of field of public administration (Moynihan et al 2013). Despite criticisms on its

conceptualization and the research associated with (see for example Bozeman and Su 2015 or

Prebble 2016), the research has come a long way since its inception. More and more

uncharted territory has been covered and thorny questions are being addressed. Gradually, the

concept evolves towards and solid scientific that also is being applied in practice. However, it

pays to acknowledge that the work is far from done – PSM is ot puzzle-solved yet – and by

no means, it provides a silver bullet for issues in public management and public

administration. At best, like any other concept in field, it is one piece of an array of possible

solutions to improve governing society.

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