ABSTRACT

Scholars have demonstrated that public service motivation (PSM) may be conditional and activated in certain contexts or by particular primes. However, to date researchers have focused on the impact of positive experiences or beneficial consequences of public serving activities on employee PSM. Altruism research suggests that PSM may also respond, somewhat counterintuitively, to negative experiences. We test this in an experimental study of 456 public employees in which treatment groups were asked to recall negative or positive interactions with citizens, before responding to questions from a widely used scale of PSM. Results suggest that expressed PSM is sensitive to, and in fact increases, in response to both positive and negative experiential primes. We conclude with a discussion of implications of conditionality for our broader understanding of PSM.

摘要

学者们已经证明，公共服务动机（PSM）可能是有条件的，并且在某些情况下或由特定的素数激活。然而，迄今为止，研究人员一直关注公共服务活动的积极经验或有益后果对员工 PSM 的影响。利他主义研究表明，PSM 也可能有点违反直觉地对消极的经验。我们在一项针对 456 名公职人员的实验研究中对此进行了测试，其中要求治疗组回忆与公民的消极或积极互动，然后再回答来自广泛使用的 PSM 量表的问题。结果表明，表达的 PSM 对积极和消极的经验启动都敏感，实际上会增加。最后，我们讨论了条件对我们更广泛地理解 PSM 的影响。