ARTICLES Antecedents of Public Service Motivation

The public administration literature has long emphasized the distinctive character of motives associated with public institu-tions. The recent development of a public service motivation (PSM) construct and an instrument to measure it opens the way for systematic empirical research. This study investigates the relationship of PSM to five sets of correlates: parental social-ization, religious socialization, professional identification, political ideology, and individual demographic characteristics. The results generally confirm the hypotheses, but several anoma-lies were identified. The findings suggest that research using the PSM construct can be fruitful for understanding motivation. Among the directions for further research are studies of the influences of educational and bureaucratic socialization on PSM and the affects of PSM on individual and organizational behavior. Public administration practitioners and educators have long contended that public employees are different from employees in other sectors of American society (Perry and Porter 1982; Witt-mer 1991). In fact, an increasing number of empirical studies suggest that public employees differ from their private sector counterparts with respect to work-related values and needs. For example, Wittmer (1991) analyzed differences in the rankings of eight reward categories for a sample of 210 employees in public, private, and hybrid organizations. He found that public and pri-vate employees differed significantly with respect to preferences for higher pay, helping others, and status. He concluded that "the public service ethic appears to be alive and well... " and "... extends beyond core public organizations (government) to J-/Mflr7(1997):2:18i-197 more hybrid groups " (1991, 380)