Public service motivation theory argues that people in the public sector hold different values than their private sector counterparts. However, little is understood about how public service motivation may be affected over time and as the result of organizational experiences. Similarly, the validity of the public service motivation scale using secondary data has largely been unexamined. This research uses longitudinal data to track the effect of participation in the national service program AmeriCorps on participants and compares these results to a similar comparison group. It is posited that public service motivation may be cultivated through participation in service-oriented activity in the nonprofit sector. Findings revealed that antecedent conditions of PSM, including prevalence of seeing family members and mentors help others as well as participation in student government weakly (but significantly) predict whether someone joins AmeriCorps programs. Additionally, Perry's original public service motivation construct appears to hold when using secondary data among people who are interested in national service. Longitudinal analysis of an adapted public service motivation construct reveals that participation in AmeriCorps programs positively affects participants' levels of commitment to public interest and their knowledge of their communities. Participation also positively affects participants' levels of attraction to public policymaking; however a comparison group demonstrates a similar jump in these measures. Finally, members' levels of openness to new ideas appear to be negatively related to service in AmeriCorps. Additionally, it is found that nonparticipants experienced significant declines in their levels of commitment to public interest, openness to new ideas, and knowledge of their communities over an eight year period.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CHENGCHI/U0003472678 |
| Creators | Ward, Kevin Dykeman. |
| Publisher | University of Colorado at Denver. |
| Source Sets | National Chengchi University Libraries |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Rights | Copyright © nccu library on behalf of the copyright holders |
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