Strength in Numbers? Understanding the Effect of Team-Level PSM on Team Effectiveness

To date, public service motivation (PSM) has been investigated only as an individual-level phenomenon. We argue that, in order better to understand team effectiveness in public organizations, it is essential that team characteristics are also taken into consideration. This study provides a key contribution to public management research by exploring the relationship between PSM and team effectiveness at the group level. Specifically, we introduce the concepts of team-level PSM, which describes the average level of PSM within a team, and PSM differentiation, which refers to the variance in PSM that exists across different members of a team. The data used for this study are based on a two-wave survey of 122 teams of public sector employees in Switzerland. Findings show that team-level PSM is indirectly related to team effectiveness through the process of team identification and that this relationship is strengthened when there is less variability in PSM within the team. The implications of our findings for theory and practice are discussed