Public Service Motivation Antecedents: Testing the European Countries

Public Service Motivation (PSM) has been defined as “an individual predisposition torespond to motives grounded primarily or uniquely in public institutions or organizations” (Perry, 1990). So far, most of the scholars focused on the definition and measurement of the construct, overlooking its determinants. What is that really moves public servants?In the last decade, only a small strand of the research focused purely on the antecedents of PSM (e.g. Perry, 1997; Moynihan & Pandey, 2007; Camilleri, 2007) and, even if the results are generally consistent across samples (Perry et al., 2008), the very little number of studies does not allow a generalization. The aim of this work is to move the focus of the PSM literature back to the origins of the construct. Specifically, we test the most important PSM antecedents in 10 countries of West Europe, giving as granted that in this area there is a similar socio-historical background. In order to identify PSM antecedents and, at the same time, to deepen the definition and measurement of the construct, we use a MIMIC model (Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes) that allows estimating the PSM as a latent construct and, at the same time, to identify exogenous cause variables affecting it