BIMTECH - Birla Institute of Management Technology
Globally, the examination of Public Service Motivation (PSM) has been instrumental in understanding how the attitudes and values of public servants shape the outcomes and efficacy of social welfare through public institutions. The construct of PSM offers a lens to assess and enhance the alignment between public servants' motivations and the objectives of public institutions. Yet research on PSM in the Indian context is conspicuously deficient as existing PSM frameworks and instruments, derived from Western-centric studies, do not adequately capture the cultural, economic, and administrative nuances that characterize the Indian public service. Consequently, there is a pressing need to investigate and measure the concept of PSM in India. In four studies, we re-examine the construct of PSM in the local context and develop a valid measure for it, identifying three unique dimensions - job security and growth, power to create change and social respect. The study contributes to the scholarly discourse on Public Service Motivation (PSM), laying groundwork for researchers in the Indian subcontinent to develop and empirically validate more refined theories of public administration.
