The relationship between personal attributes, organisational politics, public service motivation and public employee performance

Abstract

Various European public service organisations are introducing extensive reforms related to their newly acquired European Union membership status (European Commission 2003). However, fundamental to the implementation of these reforms are the public service employees. The work behavior of these employees is an essential factor in the reform process. Performance of government employees is a key element because it reflects the government’s image with society in terms of its performance and effective management. According to Kaifeng and Marc (2006) higher performance will lead to better citizen trust in government. However, the improvement of the performance of government employees will depend on how successful management can motivate them. For example, perception of organisational politics (POPS) where employees perceive unfair and unequal treatment within their organisation has potential adverse consequent outcomes that include employee withdrawal, increased job anxiety, decreased job involvement and satisfaction leading to deficient individual performance (Ferris, Russ and Fandt 1989). Furthermore, monetary rewards are not seen as the answer to successful employee motivation. Research conducted on behalf of OECD (Pilichowski 2009) reveals that the main argument put forward for performance-related pay, namely, that it acts as a motivator by providing extrinsic rewards in the form of pay and intrinsic rewards through the recognition of effort and achievement has been overestimated. The OECD report concludes that sources of motivation are to be found elsewhere.