Wouter Vandenabeele

Only When the Societal Impact Potential Is High? A Panel Study of the Relationship Between Public Service Motivation and Perceived Performance

Many studies find positive associations between public service motivation (PSM) and performance, but much of this literature is based on cross-sectional data prone to endogeneity and common method bias. Moreover, we know little about potential moderators. In this study, we test the moderating role of societal impact potential (SIP)—the degree to which the job is perceived to provide opportunities to contribute to society. We use cross-sectional data from 13,967 employees in 2010 and 2012 aggregated to construct longitudinal data for 42 organizations. As expected, the association between PSM and individual perceived performance is positive when SIP is high. However, when SIP is low, PSM is only weakly or not at all related to performance. This is an important insight for organizations that try to enhance performance through PSM. Our findings suggest that this can only be done when the employees think that their jobs allow them to contribute to society.

Special issue of International Journal of Human Resource Management: Strategic human resource management and public sector performance

From the 1990s onwards the HRM and performance debate has resulted in hundreds of conceptual and empirical articles. Several studies have demonstrated the added value of HRM for organizational perf...

Public value creation and strategic human resource management: public service motivation as a linking mechanism: A Public Values Perspective

2 Public management contributions for improving social service performance: public values, public service motivation and rule functionality 19 Gene A. Brewer 3 Public value creation and strategic human resource management: public service motivation as a linking mechanism 37 Wouter Vandenabeele, Peter Leisink and Eva Knies 4 Academia: habitat of contesting public values? 55 Henk J. van Rinsum and Arie de Ruijter 5 Public value and localism in the UK 71 Keith Grint and Clare Holt 6 The organization of social issues through sport: youths in public playgrounds 88 Jeroen Vermeulen

Challenges for large-scale international comparative survey-based research in public administration

Within the field of public administration, the experience with large-scale international comparative survey-based research is expanding. However, while such research might render extremely interesting data for comparison and analysis, such resource and time-intensive research bring also challenges, in terms of methodological risks, data quality issues, and governance. This chapter uses the experience of the COBRA survey, the COCOPS survey, and the International Public Service Motivation survey and discusses methodological challenges, like the non-response bias, the issue of measurement invariance, common method bias, and limitations of cross-sectional data, as well as important success factors for the governance of such projects. This chapter ends with some reflections on potential strategies of the public administration community to further enhance and support such research, also toward funders and governments.

Public Service Motivation: State of the Art and Conceptual Cleanup

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.

Strategic human resource management and public sector performance: context matters

Since the 1990s, there have been hundreds of conceptual and empirical articles investigating the relationship between Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) and performance. To this end, schola...