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Public Service Motivation: State of the Art and Conceptual Cleanup

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The Palgrave Handbook of Public Administration and Management in Europe

Abstract

Public service motivation is an increasingly researched and, at the same time, hotly debated concept in the field of public management and public administration. It refers to the motivation people have to contribute to society. This chapter provides an overview of what has happened so far in this field since the introduction of the concept in the 1980s and 1990s, with a particular focus on the role of the research community. In this overview, causes, consequences, and related theories are identified. The chapter also establishes gaps in the literature and issues that remain unresolved. In so doing, we carry out a conceptual cleanup by positioning the subject alongside related but different concepts such as intrinsic motivation, altruism, and prosocial motivation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Utrecht University School of Governance, Utrecht, Netherlands

    Wouter Vandenabeele

  2. University of Bern, KPM Center for Public Management, Bern, Switzerland

    Adrian Ritz & Oliver Neumann

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  1. Wouter Vandenabeele
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  2. Adrian Ritz
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  3. Oliver Neumann
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Correspondence to Wouter Vandenabeele .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise—PulSE Faculty of Business and Law , The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

    Edoardo Ongaro

  2. Institute for Management Research, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Sandra Van Thiel

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Vandenabeele, W., Ritz, A., Neumann, O. (2018). Public Service Motivation: State of the Art and Conceptual Cleanup. In: Ongaro, E., Van Thiel, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Public Administration and Management in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55269-3_13

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