Investigating the Structure and Meaning of Public Service Motivation across Populations: Developing an International Instrument and Addressing Issues of Measurement Invariance

TLDR

International research on public service motivation has expanded, raising questions about whether theories developed in one country can inform understanding in others, while progress to date has been incremental. This study revisits conceptual and operational definitions of PSM to address noted weaknesses in the literature. The authors systematically combined international scholars’ efforts to develop and test a revised PSM measurement instrument across 12 countries. The resulting four‑dimensional 16‑item measure offers a stronger theoretical and empirical foundation, yet findings indicate that PSM dimensions differ across cultures and languages, undermining the feasibility of a universal scale or direct cross‑country comparisons.

Abstract

The growth in international research on public service motivation (PSM) raises a number of important questions about the degree to which the theory and research developed in one country can contribute to our understanding of PSM in other counties. To help address this issue, this study revisits the conceptual and operational definitions of PSM to address weaknesses previously noted in the literature. Although some important steps have been taken to both improve and internationalize the PSM scale, this work has been done incrementally. In contrast, this study takes a more systematic and comprehensive approach by combining the efforts of international PSM scholars to develop and then test a revised measurement instrument for PSM in 12 countries. Although the resulting four dimensional 16-item measure of PSM reported here provides a better theoretical and empirical foundation for the measurement of PSM, our results suggest that the exact meaning and scaling of PSM dimensions are likely to differ across cultures and languages. These results raise serious concerns regarding the ability to develop a single universal scale of PSM, or making direct comparisons of PSM across countries.