Do High Public Service Motivation and High Salaries Go Hand-in-Hand? Exploring the Motivational Pattern and Remuneration of Swiss Local Government Officials

摘要

The concept of public service motivation has been validated in numerous studies internationally, including in the People's Republic of China (Liu et al. 2008). It is of great interest to public administration scholars due to its ability to predict the attitudes and behavior of public officials such as their organizational commitment and work engagement, which themselves are of interest to civil service reformers. Little is known, however, about whether the strength of an official's public service motivation is reflected in his or her remuneration. Does high public service motivation pay off financially? As a first stab at investigating this question, in this paper we examine whether public service motivation and remuneration are associated among Swiss local government employees. We begin by reviewing the concept of public service motivation and its correlates, followed by an overview of the determinants of the remuneration of public officials. We then test whether public service motivation predicts remuneration using survey data on 3,024 Swiss local government employees. Considering three dimensions of public service motivation, we find that the dimensions of Attraction to Policy-Making and Commitment to the Public Interest predict a higher salary interval and Compassion a lower salary interval, controlling for standard determinants of remuneration.