THE EFFECTS OF MOTIVATION AND LEADERSHIP ON PUBLIC EMPLOYEES' JOB PREFERENCES: EVIDENCE FROM TWO DISCRETE CHOICE EXPERIMENTS

We conducted two discrete choice experiments to investigate how different motivational forces (i.e., public service motivation, external regulation, and intrinsic motivation) and different styles of leadership (i.e.,... [ view full abstract ]

We conducted two discrete choice experiments to investigate how different motivational forces (i.e., public service motivation, external regulation, and intrinsic motivation) and different styles of leadership (i.e., transformational, transactional, and ethical leadership) simultaneously and independently affect public employees’ job decisions. Results indicate that public sector workers tend to have a strong preference for jobs that provide greater opportunity to serve the public, that are more interesting, and that require working under ethical leaders rather than unethical ones. Moreover, whereas small financial incentives do not seem to affect public employees’ decisions, moderate financial incentives – in the order of five percent of the salary – do significantly increase public employees’ preferences for a given job position. Furthermore, our findings seem to suggest that public employees do not have any preference for working under either transformational or transactional leaders. The article concludes by suggesting strategies that future research could adopt to address the external and construct validity limitations of our work.