Merit recruitment, tenure protections and public service motivation: Evidence from a conjoint experiment with 7,300 public servants in Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Author | Jan Meyer‐Sahling,Kim Sass Mikkelsen,Christian Schuster |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12708 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Merit recruitment, tenure protections and public
service motivation: Evidence from a conjoint
experiment with 7,300 public servants in Latin
America, Africa and Eastern Europe
Jan Meyer-Sahling
1
| Kim Sass Mikkelsen
2
| Christian Schuster
3
1
School of Politics & International Relations,
University of Nottingham, UK
2
Department of Social Science and Business,
Roskilde University, Denmark
3
School of Public Policy, University College
London, UK
Correspondence
Christian Schuster, School of Public Policy,
University College London, 29/30 Tavistock
Square, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
Email: c.schuster@ucl.ac.uk
Funding information
British Academy-UK Department for
International Development (DFID) Anti-
Corruption Evidence Programme
Abstract
How can governments manage civil servants to enhance
public service motivation (PSM)? Despite the centrality of
PSM in public administration research, the effects of man-
agement practices on PSM remain understudied. We
address this gap through a conjoint experiment with 7,300
public servants in five countries in Africa, Latin America and
Eastern Europe. Our experiment assesses two practices:
merit-based competitions for recruitment versus discretion-
ary appointments; and permanent tenure versus temporary
job contracts. We find that merit competitions are associ-
ated with greater PSM by respondents in four countries, yet
have no significant effect in a fifth. Permanent contracts are
associated with greater PSM (two countries), lower PSM
(one country) and have no significant effect (two countries).
The effects of personnel management practices thus appear
to vary across contexts. A common practice in public admin-
istration research—generalizations about the effects of
management practices from single-country studies or cross-
country averages—requires rethinking.
1|INTRODUCTION
Public service motivation (PSM)—a‘general, altruistic motivation to serve the interests of a community of people, a
state, a nation or humankind’(Rainey and Steinbauer 1999, p. 20)—is a central concept in public administration. Since
its initial conceptualization by Perry and Wise (1990), research on public service motivation (PSM) has grown to more
than 300 studies (Ritz et al. 2016). This research interest is in large part motivated by the positive outcomes PSM is
Received: 21 June 2019 Revised: 29 October 2020 Accepted: 1 November 2020
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12708
740 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Public Admin. 2021;99:740–757.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm
associated with. Over 100 studies link PSM to, for instance, greater job performance, work motivation, job satisfac-
tion and organizational commitment (Ritz et al. 2016).
This puts a premium on understanding how organizations can promote PSM. Yet, in PSM research, ‘man-
agement practices have received limited direct empirical investigation’(Christensen et al. 2017, p. 530). What
is arguably most actionable to governments—which management practices enhance PSM—is thus among the
least studied topics in PSM research.
Several recent studies are the exception (see Christensen et al. 2017 for a summary). They have looked at the
effects on PSM of, among others: red tape (e.g., Moynihan and Pandey 2007); job design (in particular, opportunities
to serve the public) (e.g., Gould-Williams 2016); leadership and leader–follower relations (e.g., Paarlberg and
Lavigna 2010); and hierarchical authority and centralized command (e.g., Jacobsen et al. 2014).
One management area which remains particularly understudied is civil service management.
1
As Perry (2015,
p. 228) puts it, ‘empirical research to date does not permit strong inferences about the …influence of civil service
systems …on PSM’. This is an important omission. Governments are arguably keen to know how their recruitment,
pay, career and performance management practices affect the PSM of their staff. This holds all the more in light of
New Public Management (NPM)-inspired reform attempts of Weberian civil services over the last three decades,
which have caused concerns about a crowding out of PSM in public sectors (e.g., Moynihan 2010; Bellé and
Ongaro 2014; Brewer and Kellough 2016). As a result, integrating PSM and human resource management research is
‘of foremost importance’(Ritz et al. 2016, p. 422).
Our article advances this i ntegration. It assesse s the effect on PSM of two personne l management practices
which are central to bot h Weberian civil servic e systems and managerial reforms—merit competitions for public
sector recruitment (ve rsus discretionary ap pointments); and perm anent job contracts (te nure) (versus temporar y
contracts). Drawing on social identity theory to make the cas e for Weberian civil ser vice systems and person–
environment fit theory to argue for managerial reform, we develop competing predictions relating merit recruit-
ment and tenure to PSM.
We test our hypotheses using a conjoint experiment with public servants, in which we ask public servants to
compare the PSM of hypothetical profiles of colleagues with varying characteristics, including their recruitment
and contract type. To foster external validity, we conducted this survey experiment with 7,300 public servants in
five countries in three continents (Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe), which remain understudied in PSM
research (Ritz et al. 2016). To our knowledge, this is the largest cross-country survey experiment ever conducted
with public servants.
We find that civil service management practices have different conjoint effects on PSM in different countries.
Merit-based recruitment through competitions for public sector positions—rather than discretionary appointments—
is associated with greater PSM in four of five countries. In a fifth country, we observe no significant effect. This sug-
gests that Weber's (1978, p. 959) hypothesis about merit recruitment applies in many—but not all—countries. At the
same time, permanent contracts are associated with greater PSM in two countries, lower PSM in one country, yet no
significant conjoint effect in two further countries. Contrary to notions of classical Weberian bureaucracy, the
effects of permanent contracts thus vary.
More generally, our findings underscore the fragility of generalizing about management practices from single-
country studies or average cross-country effects—the basis for most inferences about management practices in pub-
lic administration research to date. Vice versa, our findings underscore the importance of replication studies and
research programmes which assess, with the same experimental research designs, the effects of the same manage-
ment practices in different countries to understand which management practices tend to have positive effects across
countries, and which have context-specific effects.
1
In this article, we understand civil service management narrowly as ‘functions for the day-to-day operations of managing people in [public] organizations',
including human resource management functions such as recruitment, selection, remuneration, performanceappraisal, employment protection and
dismissals (but excluding other people management-related functions such as leadership) (see Berman 2015, p. 114).
MEYER-SAHLING ET AL.741
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