Understanding relationships between public service motivation and involvement in socio‐political organizations: Perspectives of organizational field theory
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12577 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Author | Palina Prysmakova |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Understanding relationships between public
service motivation and involvement in socio-
political organizations: Perspectives of
organizational field theory
Palina Prysmakova
School of Public Administration, Florida
Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, USA
Correspondence
Palina Prysmakova, School of Public
Administration, Florida Atlantic University,
777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33-431,
USA.
Email: pprysmakova@fau.edu
Funding information
Miami-Florida Jean Monnet European Center
of Excellence, Graduate Student Research
Grant; Florida International University,
Dissertation Year Fellowship and Doctoral
Evidence Acquisition Fellowship; Krechevsky
Foundation, Data Acquisition Grant; Open
Society Institute, Civil Society Scholar Award;
Orsa-Romano Cultural-and-Educational
Foundation, Belarus Research Grant.
The study provides insights about public service motivation values
and participation in socio-political organizations. It applies organiza-
tional field theory to a sample of similar public and nonprofit ser-
vice providers in a border region of two independent states. The
results reveal that socio-political activities bear different meanings
for individuals from different sectors and countries. Thus, from an
institutional perspective, despite offering similar services, the orga-
nizations studied belong to different organizational fields. This vali-
dates a recent shift from defining an organizational field as a group
of organizations that share products, services, or markets to those
that share common meanings. A broader context being a sector of
economy or an administrative realm defines the types of socio-
political activities that share institutional infrastructures with public
service organizations. Specifically, mutually exclusive associations
are found for churches, political parties, and professional and
volunteering groups. The study also indicates no value overlap with
labour unions.
1|INTRODUCTION
The increasing popularity of civil society ideas caused a growth in studies about the relationship between different
forms of civic participation and public service motivation (PSM), briefly defined as the desire to help others by means
of public service. The literature links PSM to various activities valued by society including volunteering and donating
(Houston 2006; Clerkin et al. 2009; Coursey et al. 2011; Esteve et al. 2016), and political and social activism (Keele
2007; Houston 2008; Taylor 2010; Ritz 2015). Research suggests that public service providing organizations and
socio-political organizations share values leading to self-sacrifice, compassion, attraction to public service, and com-
mitment to public interest, confirming that public service ‘signifies more than one’s locus of employment’and, there-
fore, should not be viewed as exclusively governmental (Perry and Wise 1990, p. 368).
Received: 22 November 2017 Revised: 9 November 2018 Accepted: 15 November 2018
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12577
Public Administration. 2019;97:429–450. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 429
Scholars have been looking for a common link between associations of PSM with socio-political activities, sug-
gesting that public service providing organizations should constitute an organizational field that has some stable
associations with other socio-political institutions. Their efforts could be summarized under DiMaggio and Powell’s
(1983) definition of an organizational field, which posits that organizations of one field are gathered around a com-
mon service or product, which for PSM studies would often be public service and public service provision. Some
studies have confirmed each other, but largely, the efforts to find a common pattern of associations with socio-
political activities have led to ambiguous results (see Ritz et al. 2016). Even though institutional theory provided some
guidance, for instance about PSM and parental, political, religious, professional and educational socialization (Perry
1997), the results did not offer a clear perspective on whether a highly public service motivated individual exhibits a
predictable pattern of volunteering, church-going, or activism in political parties, labour unions and professional orga-
nizations; and if an institutional context matters, then in which way it frames these relationships.
Advancing the work of Perry (1997), Taylor (2010), Anderfuhren-Biget (2012) and Ritz (2015), the present study
aims to further understand, explore and describe possible relationships between PSM dimensions and institutional
values of social and political organizations attended after work. While there is certainly a precedent of value sharing
at the organizational level (e.g., Moynihan and Pandey 2007; Wright et al. 2012), the present study points to the rela-
tive importance of labour and volunteering framed by broader contexts of the institutional logic within cultures and
corresponding institutions. Institutions are defined as ‘core, distinguishing, societal-level patterns (structures) that
characterize one area of social life, and that are fundamentally interlocked with each other’(Hinings and Tolbert
2008, p. 474). Public service motivation, from that viewpoint, is considered as ‘an individual instantiation of these [its
anteceding] institutions’(Perry 2000 as cited in Vandenabeele 2007).
This research proposes that instead of only being associated with public service provision, socio-political institu-
tions constitute a part of their organizational fields, sharing with them common institutional value infrastructure. The
study is guided by more recent definitions of an organizational field built around shared meanings and ideas
(Greenwood and Suddaby 2006; Scott 2014) rather than services and products (DiMaggio and Powell 1983). Com-
paring associations of socio-political variables with PSM dimensions in different institutionalcontexts, the study pro-
vides empirical examples of organizational fields that gather organizations around shared values rather than a
similarity of a service that they provide.
The organizational field became a central construct of neo-institutional theory (Scott 2014), and scholars are
engaged in a lot of work discovering cultural and cognitive processes that guide the behaviour of the members of
organizational fields (Wooten and Hoffman 2017). Along the same lines, this study seeks to understand the institu-
tions that ‘directly and indirectly determine the motives guiding individual behavior’(Vandenabeele 2007, p. 547).
Institutional logic provides behavioural frames for organizations and their members engaging them in established
organizational practices, routines and principles (Wedlin and Sahlin 2017). These practices, routines and principles
adopted through, for instance, volunteering or political activism reflect internalized individual values and suggest
how a person might also behave at work. Considering several types of social, pro-social and political activities in four
different institutional contexts, this article emphasizes the importance of this connection and answers the call of
Perry (2000) and Nowell et al. (2016) that we should better understand the institutional differences that promote a
sense of responsibility in public service employees to strengthen their engagement and develop their leadership qual-
ities. The present study reinforces some previous findings about PSM and socio-political variables and opens new
avenues for further examination of public service organizations, which might belong to all sorts of organizational
fields, depending on the broader institutional context.
2|SHARED MARKETS AND SHARED MEANINGS PERSPECTIVES
Theorization of public service motivation from the institutional perspective emphasizes that ‘one can consider public
service motivated behavior to conform to a logic of appropriateness as it refers to the realization of certain
430 PRYSMAKOVA
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