New findings on public service motivation in the public sector often contradict the previous ones. Such deviations are regularly explained by the uniqueness of the institutional settings of the sample. Yet, only few studies have compared PSM across different institutional environments; even less is known about nonprofit employees. We can only speculate that their institutional antecedents of PSM resemble their public counterparts because of the public benefit orientation of their work. Utilizing a Most Similar Systems Design method to test the institutional propositions on a sample of public and nonprofit employees from two different institutional environments, the present study confirms that (a) PSM variation of public employees across different countries can be explained by a state-level institutional variation, and (b) for PSM of nonprofit employees, the institutional environment of a country may be irrelevant. The results confirm earlier propositions of the sectoral differences of PSM and urge us to revisit the generalizability of the previous findings of PSM relationships because they can be limited by the similarity of the observed systems.

中文翻译：

---

公共服务动机的制度前因：行政体制与经济部门

关于公共部门公共服务动机的新发现往往与之前的发现相矛盾。这种偏差通​​常由样本制度设置的独特性来解释。然而，只有少数研究比较了不同制度环境下的 PSM；对非营利组织员工的了解就更少了。我们只能推测，由于他们工作的公共利益导向，他们的 PSM 制度前身与他们的公共同行相似。本研究利用最相似的系统设计方法对来自两个不同制度环境的公共和非营利雇员样本测试制度命题，证实 (a) 不同国家公共雇员的 PSM 变化可以用州级来解释制度变迁，(b) 对于非营利雇员的 PSM，一个国家的制度环境可能无关紧要。结果证实了先前关于 PSM 部门差异的命题，并敦促我们重新审视 PSM 关系先前发现的普遍性，因为它们可能受到观察系统相似性的限制。