Sense of Community, Sense of Community Responsibility, and Public Service Motivation as Predictors of Employee Well-Being and Engagement in Public Service Organizations

Abstract

Public management scholars have suggested that employee motivation can be accentuated by organizational cultures and contexts. One of the most researched topics in this regard is the concept of public service motivation (PSM). Research shows that PSM works to direct applicants toward public service careers and, once hired, can be linked to motivated activity within public-sector organizations. Similarly, like PSM, a sense of community (SOC) and a sense of community responsibility (SOC-R) have also been posited to act as powerful predictors of employee well-being and engagement. The present study demonstrates that SOC-R is a more powerful predictor of employee engagement compared with PSM and SOC. Concurrently, SOC more strongly predicts employee well-being compared with PSM and SOC-R. The findings bring additional light and clarification to the predictive power of PSM on employee perceptions and behavior, and they demonstrate that community experiences have utility in public service settings.