Public Service Motivation and Public Opinion: Examining Antecedents and Attitudes (Elements in Public and Nonprofit Administration), Piatak, Jaclyn and Holt, Stephen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 84 pp., $20.00 (pb), ISBN: 9781108964005
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Author | Colt Jensen |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12767 |
BOOK REVIEW
Public Service Motivation and Public Opinion:
Examining Antecedents and Attitudes (Elements
in Public and Nonprofit Administration)
Piatak, Jaclyn and Holt, Stephen
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 84 pp., $20.00 (pb), ISBN: 9781108964005
Within the field of public administration, Public Service Motivation (PSM) holds a relatively unique position as a
concept that was not imported from another field but primarily developed within public administration (Perry &
Vandenabeele, 2015). As a concept native to public administration, the number of PSM-related publications has
grown rapidly in recent years, and much of PSM research still remains “closely bound to the field of public adminis-
tration”(Ritz et al., 2016, p. 421). The proliferation of PSM-related research has been met with important conceptual
critiques. Primary among these concerns is the critique that “PSM concepts remain ambiguous because they do not
distinguish adequately from other concepts”(Bozeman & Su, 2015, p. 705). In their previous collaborations, Piatak
and Holt directly addressed critiques concerning conceptual clarity by working to differentiate PSM empirically and
conceptually from altruism (see Piatak & Holt, 2020a,2020b). In their latest collaboration, the book's authors
reexamine the influence of individual characteristics, socioeconomic status, and sociocultural status on individual
levels of PSM, and investigate how PSM shapes public policy preferences, attitudes, and behaviors. In doing so,
Piatak and Holt continue their previous work of disentangling PSM from potentially related concepts, including polit-
ical ideology and partisan affiliation, and demonstrate the utility and applicability of PSM for fields adjacent to public
administration including political science and criminal justice.
This six-section book is constructed in a similar manner to a journal article with an introduction and literature
review, discussion of the data and methods, presentation of findings, discussion section, and a conclusion. This struc-
ture serves the book well as the authors' aim is to not only investigate who has PSM and how PSM shapes public
opinion, but also to simultaneously introduce and demonstrate the applicability and utility of the concept to a wider
audience. Despite the extensive data analysis presented in this book, there are no lengthy tables of results, and the
book is largely free of esoteric prose. Instead, the book offers easily interpretable tables and graphs as well as lan-
guage that is readily understood by interdisciplinary scholars of the social sciences. For those who desire them, there
are full tables and detailed results presented in the appendix.
In the first section, the concept of PSM is introduced and defined “as the drive to help others, based in public
institutions”(p. 6). As there is no paradigm or dominant research program within PSM research, this section helps sit-
uate the reader within the broader context of previous PSM research and explains the authors' choice to focus on
the global measure of PSM rather than using a multidimensional approach. The author's motivation for this research
is also made clear. They postulate that understanding who has PSM is important, because varying levels of PSM may
influence policy views and public employee priorities, actions, and decisions. As a result, PSM may not only be a use-
ful concept for public administration scholars and practitioners, but also for “other fields and disciplines, including
political science”(p. 7).
Received: 7 July 2021 Accepted: 9 July 2021
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12767
Public Admin. 2022;100:451–453. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 451
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