Abstract

1. Public Service Motivation and Job Satisfaction: Is the Love of Money a Moderator among Public Servants in China?Bangcheng Liu andThomas Li-Ping TangE-Mail: ttang@mtsu.edu Abstract China needs 12 million civil servants to serve the population of 1.3 billion. To effectively and efficiently motivate the huge troop is a thorny issue (Liu, Tang, & Zhu, 2008). This study investigates the extent to which people’s money attitude (the love of money) moderates the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction among public sector professionals in China. We collected data from 167 full-time public sector professionals who were also part-time students in a Master of Public Administration (MPA) program, located in the eastern part of the People’s Republic of China. After our examination of key constructs using confirmatory factor analyses (CFA), regression results showed that public personnel’s love of money moderated the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction in that individuals with high love of money have a significantly stronger relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction than those without, supporting the crowding-in effect in the intrinsic motivation literature. Alternatively, for high love-of-money civil servants with a steel-rice-bowl mentality, their high job satisfaction may be explained by the best offer (output) for the minimum amount of effort (input) in the Chinese context. Since public servants have lower income than those in the private sector in general, we discuss our somewhat counterintuitive findings in light of equity theory, ethical organizational culture, personal values, money attitude, corruption, and public servants’ institutional background in China. A good match between personal values (high public service motivation) and the nature of the task (providing services to the general public) leads to high intrinsic motivation (Tang & Baumeister, 1984). Supportive financial incentives can “crowd in” intrinsic motivation and increase employees’ work effort (Frey & Jegen, 2001). Most people would like to receive “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work”. If government “pretends” to pay public servants, public servants also “pretend” to work for government. This leads to perceptions that government employees are lazy (Delfgaauw & Dur, 2008) or hardly working (Frank & Lewis, 2004) and do not respond positively toward performance-based pay systems (Marsden & Richardson, 1994). These behavioral patterns can be explained by self-selection, the ASA process, organizational cultures, equity theory (Adams, 1964), and the institutional characteristics such as: “steel rice bowl” in the Chinese work setting. These jobs provide the best offer (output) for the minimum amount of effort (input). Most Chinese consider the compensation package to be huge for public servants (Jiang, 2005). That is the reason why so many people want to work for the public sector in China (Liu, 2009). Reference: Liu, B. C., & Tang, T. L. P. in press/2011. Does the Love of Money Moderate the Relationship between Public Service Motivation and Job Satisfaction? The Case of Chinese Professionals in the Public Sector. Public Administration Review.