Many studies found positive relationships between Public Service Motivation (PSM) and Individual Performance (IP). However, other studies showed mixed and insignificant rather than positive relationships (Alonso and Lewis 2001, Leisink and Stejin 2009, Petrovsky & Ritz, 2014). This may depend on differences in the institutional context, in which the PSM-IP relationship has been studied.
Some scholars studying this association have tested for a simple, direct link betwen PSM and worker performance (Alonso and Lewis 2001; Frank and Lewis 2004; Bellè 2013), while other scholars have found that PSM is indirectly connected to the performance of public employees, through its influence on other variables (Bright, 2007, Vandenabeele, 2009), but much more research is needed (Andersen et al. 2014, Wright 2008, Wright and Grant 2010). In fact, the studies providing empirical evidence of this relationship, have not fully illustrated the process by which it produces such effect.
To improve the knowledge of a given phenomenon, some scholars have recognized the need to test for mediating and moderating variables (Lewis and Frank 2002, Wright 2007, 2008, Bozeman 2015). Consequently, the purpose of this article is to shed more light on the positive relationship between PSM and IP, and providing empirical evidence of both the mediating and moderating role of the motivation to benefit individual recipients of public services (called User Orientation) in this relationship. To test these hypotheses, we chose the context of public service organizations, such as schools, characterized by a daily face-to face relationship with the individual user of the service, relative to an emotional labour, such as teaching. We then gathered data from 618 public teachers and 156 school principals working in all grades of state schools in southern Italy, by means of self-report questionnaires.
After explorative and confirmatory factor analyses, we applied structural equation modelling to test the mediating and moderating role of User Orientation (UO) in the PSM-IP relationship.
The findings showed that a public servant’s UO mediates, but does not moderate, this relationship. This means that individuals with a strong orientation “to do good for others and for society” (Hondeghem and Perry 2009), are also better oriented towards helping specific users of the public service, students in our case. The desire to help students and satisfy their needs, in turn, leads teachers and school principals to enhance their performance at work. Nevertheless, individuals with a strong UO do not have a significantly stronger PSM-IP relationship than those without. This study also finds, by carrying out multi-group analyses, that the relationships between PSM, UO, and IP does not differ if we take into account school employees performing different roles (teachers, special needs teachers and school principals), but does differ when we consider teachers working in different grades of schools (primary and upper secondary schools). Eventually, the implications of such findings and possible areas of future research are discussed.
