Public service: organizational, social, and personal factors that affect employee motivation

Malta, Marcelo Tenório; Boente, Diego Rodrigues; Nossa, Valcemiro; Sousa, Walter Souto de

doi:10.1590/1678-6971/eRAMG2640148

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Human and Social Management • RAM, Rev. Adm. Mackenzie 27 (4) • 2026 • https://doi.org/10.1590/1678-6971/eRAMG2640148 linkcopy

Public service: organizational, social, and personal factors that affect employee motivation

Serviço público: fatores organizacionais, sociais e pessoais que afetam a motivação dos funcionários

Authorship SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Purpose: This study analyzes the influence of prosocial behavior, organizational commitment, life satisfaction, and self-determination on public service motivation, and the moderating role of self-determination in these relationships.

Originality/value: This article contributes to the advancement of the literature by examining self-determination not only as a direct indicator of public service motivation but also as a moderator of the relationships among social, organizational, and individual motivational factors.

Design/methodology/approach: The study uses a quantitative, crosssectional approach, based on survey data collected from Brazilian civil servants. The hypotheses were tested using Partial Least Squares - Structural Equation Modeling.

Results: The results indicate that prosocial behavior, organizational commitment, and self-determination positively affect public service motivation. However, self-determination negatively moderates the relationship between prosocial behavior and public service motivation, whereas life satisfaction was not statistically significant.

Contribution/implications: The study contributes theoretically by increasing the understanding of the interaction between autonomy and public service motivation and provides practical implications for public managers seeking to balance autonomy, collective engagement, and organizational commitment.

Keywords:
public service motivation; prosocial behavior; organizational commitment; life satisfaction; self-determination

Construct	Variable	Number of statements
Public Service Motivation Adapted from Alonso & Lewis’s scale (2001).	Motivation	5
Prosocial Behavior. Adapted from Baumsteiger & Siegel (2018).	Prosocial Behavior	4
Organizational Commitment. Adapted from Mowday et al. (1979).	Affective Commitment	9
	Calculative commitment	5
Life Satisfaction. Adapted from Diener et al.’s scale (1985)	Satisfaction	5
Self-determination. Adapted from Tremblay et al.’s scale (2009).	Unregulated	3
	External Regulation	3
	Introjected Regulation	3
	Regulation Identified	3
	Integrated Regulation	3
	Intrinsic Regulation	3

First order constructs	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11
1. Amotivation
2. Prosocial Behavior	0.137
3. Affective Commitment	0.440	0.356
4. Calculative Commitment	0.730	0.136	0.526
5. Public Service Motivation	0.266	0.613	0.653	0.271
6. External Regulation	0.305	0.080	0.153	0.192	0.171
7. Identified Regulation	0.279	0.388	0.608	0.210	0.462	0.240
8. Introjected Regulation	0.123	0.217	0.638	0.088	0.437	0.263	0.732
9. Intrinsic Regulation	0.262	0.222	0.737	0.283	0.577	0.080	0.827	0.745
10. Integrated Regulation	0.312	0.195	0.647	0.223	0.611	0.282	0.776	0.757	0.801
11. Satisfaction with life	0.505	0.269	0.660	0.501	0.486	0.338	0.448	0.288	0.467	0.446
Cronbach’s alpha	0.540	0.720	0.834	0.612	0.679	0.716	0.712	0.621	0.761	0.744	0.823
rho_A	0.542	0.726	0.843	0.620	0.679	0.752	0.712	0.626	0.766	0.749	0.829
Convergent Reliability (CR)	0.765	0.825	0.876	0.794	0.806	0.837	0.874	0.797	0.862	0.855	0.876
Average Variance Extracted (AVE)	0.521	0.541	0.505	0.563	0.509	0.632	0.776	0.567	0.676	0.664	0.587

Second order constructs	1	2
1. Self-determination
2. Organizational Commitment	0.698
Cronbach’s alpha	0.832	0.549
rho_A	0.855	1.028
Convergent Reliability (CR)	0.887	0.780
Average Variance Extracted (AVE)	0.663	0.651

Structural relations	HP	VIF	f²	SC	p-value
Prosocial behavior → Public Service Motivation	H1(+)	1.106	0.154	0.317	0.000
Organizational commitment → Public Service Motivation	H2(+)	1.955	0.030	0.186	0.001
Satisfaction with life → Public Service Motivation	H3(+)	1.520	0.009	0.090	0.073
Self-determination → Public Service Motivation	H4(+)	1.547	0.064	0.242	0.000
Prosocial behavior x Self-determination → Public Service	H5a (+)	1.080	0.018	-0.111	0.009
Organizational commitment x Self-determination → Public Service Motivation	H5b (+)	1.127	0.017	-0.103	0.035
Satisfaction with life x Self-determination → Public Service Motivation	H5c (+)	1.097	0.005	-0.058	0.627

Control variable	Groups	Structural Relations							R²
Control variable	Groups	PB → SPM	OC → SPM	SL → SPM	SD → SPM	PB x SD → SPM	OC x SD → SPM	SL x SD → SPM	R²
Education	Graduate	0.461*	0.337*	0.003	0.057	-0.070	-0.206***	0.050	0.475
	Postgraduate	0.224*	0.169***	0.153***	0.243**	-0.220	-0.190	0.260	0.287
	Master/PhD	0.339*	0.238**	-0.005	0.376*	-0.150	-0.030	-0.050	0.553
Income	1 to 4 min. wages	0.216***	0.239***	0.213***	0.221**	-0.116	-0.132	-0.191	0.576
	5 to 9	0.000	0.020	0.293*	0.398*	-0.182	-0.203**	0.250*	0.602
	10 to 14	0.369*	0.091	-0.039	0.370	-0.300	-0.377***	0.262	0.492
	More than 15	0.275*	0.408*	-0.004	0.136	-0.126	-0.010	-0.164	0.435
Length of service	0 to 5 years	0.297*	-0.003	0.412*	0.231***	-0.268**	-0.016	-0.257	0.704
	6 to 10	-0.001	-0.293	0.494**	0.363***	0.030	0.147	-0.556**	0.505
	11 to 15	0.198**	0.271**	-0.025	0.371*	-0.123	-0.107	0.148	0.486
	16 to 20	0.378*	0.523*	-0.204***	0.097	-0.183	0.233	-0.027	0.569
	More than 20 years	0.482*	0.246***	0.033	0.100	0.340	-0.152	-0.100	0.488
Age	Baby Boomers	0.431*	0.169	0.184	0.145	-0.145	-0.193***	-0.126	0.602
	X Generation	0.373*	0.324*	0.037	0.039	0.173	-0.294***	0.221***	0.447
	Y Generation	0.213*	0.000	0.187**	0.461*	-0.077	-0.038	-0.226	0.504
Model Data		0.317*	0.186*	0.09	0.242*	-0.111**	-0.103***	-0.058	0.402

Variable	Hypotheses	Findings
Education	H6a: Higher education → greater self-determination and PSM	✓ Education positively affects self-determination
	H6b: Higher education → higher prosocial behavior and PSM	✗ Education negatively affects prosocial behavior
	H6c: Higher education → greater organizational commitment and PSM	✗ Hypothesis not supported: education had no significant effect on Organizational Commitment
Income	H7: Higher income → lower prosocial behavior and PSM	✗ Hypothesis not supported: income had no significant effect on prosocial behavior
Length of Service	H8a: Longer length of service → lower organizational commitment and PSM	✗ Longer service increases prosocial behavior
Length of Service	H8b: Longer length of service → less prosocial behavior and PSM	✗ Longer service increases organizational commitment
Age	H9a: Baby Boomer Generation shows greater organizational commitment and prosocial behavior than Generation X, strengthening the relationship with PSM	✗ Hypotheses not supported: age had no significant effect on public service motivation
	H9b: Baby Boomer generation shows greater organizational commitment and prosocial behavior than Generation Y, strengthening the relationship with PSM
	H9c: Generation X shows greater organizational commitment and prosocial behavior than Generation Y, strengthening the relationship with PSM

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[1] Note: PSM - Public Service Motivation, PB - Prosocial Behavior, OC -Organizational Commitment, SL - Satisfaction with Life, SD - Self-determination. Number of observations for each control variable: education (n=465), income (n=473), length of service (n=473), age (n=470). Significance Level:

[TFN1] ^*
≤ 0.001%,

[TFN2] ^**
≤ 0.01%,

[TFN3] ^***
≤ 0.05%.