List of Abbreviations
Chapter 4: Research Framework
4.3 Research gaps and hypothesis construction
4.3.3 Organisational commitment and public service motivation
OC has many definitions; one of the most frequently cited is that of Porter et al.
(1974, p. 604), who defined OC as the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organisation. The authors suggested that OC can be characterized by three traits: first, a strong belief in and acceptance of the organisation’s goals and values; second, a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organisation; and third, a strong desire to maintain membership in the organisation. Buchanan (1974, p. 533) viewed OC as a ‘partisan, affective attachment to the goals and values of an organisation, to one's role in relation to goals and values, and to the organisation for its own sake, apart from its purely instrumental worth’. Buchanan also considered organisational commitment to consist of three components, each of which is measured with an independent series of questionnaire items. The first component is identification, or adoption of the goals and values of the organisation as one's own; the second is involvement, which he defined as psychological immersion or absorption in the activities of one's work role; and the third component is loyalty,
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a feeling of affection for and attachment to the organisation. According to Meyer and Allen (1991, p. 67), OC is a psychological state that 1) characterises the employee’s relationship with the organisation and 2) has implications for the decision to continue or discontinue membership in the organisation. Based on this concept, Meyer and Allen then introduced three types of commitment: affective, continuance, and normative commitment. This typology can be seen in part as an extension of Buchanan’s (1974) concept in that the two classifications share the component of ‘affective commitment’; however, Meyer and Allen (1991) also introduced the two additional components of continuance and normative commitment. Meyer and Allen explained affective commitment as referring to the employee’s emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organisation. Meanwhile, continuance commitment refers to an awareness of the costs associated with leaving the organisation, and normative commitment reflects a feeling of obligation to continue employment. A study by O’Reilly and Chatman (1986) suggested that commitment is the psychological attachment felt by the person for the organisation. Based on their definition, O’Reilly and Chatman (1986) identified three fundamental components of OC: internalization, identification and compliance. Although existing studies have described OC in somewhat different ways, they all centre around one common attribute: an employee’s emotional attachment to the organisation.
OC in public organisations was extensively studied by Balfour and Wechsler (1990, 1996) using the three sub-types of commitment to the organisation proposed by O’Reilly and Chatman (1986). Balfour and Wechsler (1990) indicated that public employees develop OC through experience in a positive work environment. Their second study (1996) yielded similar results, finding that public employees’ OC is influenced by experiences at work, the impact of organisational arrangements, and characteristics of the job itself. In terms of how management models or tools applied within the organisation may influence OC, the literature is still very limited.
One study (Molina et al. 2014) studied how a management model, specifically the
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BSC, affects employees’ satisfaction, commitment, satisfaction with supervision, competitive climate among the employees and job dedication. The authors found the implementation of the BSC within the organisation to have a positive relationship with employees’ commitment. Following this finding, the researcher expects the implementation of the BSC to demonstrate a positive association with OC. Thus, based on previous related findings, the following hypotheses were developed:
H4. The SFO principles within the implementation of the BSC are positively associated with OC.
H4a. The better the strategy translation through BSC implementation, the more employees’ organisational commitment will increase;
H4b. The better the strategy alignment through BSC implementation, the more employees’ organisational commitment will increase;
H4c. The better the realisation of strategy as everyone’s everyday job through BSC implementation, the more employees’ organisational commitment will increase;
H4d. The better the realisation of strategy as a continuous process through BSC implementation, the more employees’ organisational commitment will increase;
H4e. The better the leadership involvement through BSC implementation, the more employees’ organisational commitment will increase.
Turning to public service motivation (PSM), the term was originally introduced by Perry and Wise (1990). PSM, according to Perry and Wise, refers to ‘an individual's predisposition to respond to motives grounded primarily or uniquely in public institutions and organisations’ (p. 368). Based on their research, the authors identified three public service motives: rational, norm-based and affective. Brewer and Selden (1998a, p. 417) defined PSM as ‘the motivational force that induces individuals to perform public service’. Similarly, Rainey and Steinbauer (1999) defined PSM as ‘a general, altruistic motivation to serve the interests of a community of people, a state, a nation or humankind’ (p. 24). Another definition of PSM was contributed by Vandenabeele (2007), who defined it as ‘the belief,
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values and attitudes that go beyond self-interest and organisational interest, that concern the interest of a larger political entity and that motivate individuals to act accordingly whenever appropriate’ (p. 547).
According to Vandenabeele (2011), despite the growing attention to PSM research, the antecedents of PSM have remained under-researched, as most of the studies performed have addressed its outcomes rather than its origins. Only a few researchers have focused on examining the antecedents of PSM empirically (Perry 1997; Bright 2005; Camilleri 2007; Moynihan and Pandey 2007). Perry (1997) suggested that PSM develops from exposure to a variety of experiences, some associated with childhood, some associated with religion, and some associated with professional life (p. 190). Additionally, a study by Bright (2005) using research surveys on a large county government in the USA concluded that public employees with high levels of PSM desired monetary incentives significantly less than those with lower levels of PSM (p. 150).
Camilleri and Heijden (2007), who examined the antecedents of PSM among 3,400 Maltese public officers, found that the level of an employee’s PSM is mainly the result of the organisational environment surrounding him or her. The author suggested that in order to maximise employees’ PSM levels, the employees must be provided with both unequivocal goals and a prioritization of goals, irrespective of whether employees receive their instructions from one or more sources.
Similarly, a study by Moynihan and Pandey (2007) highlighted organisational environment as a factor that may increase the desire of employees to contribute to the public good. In their conclusion, Moynihan and Pandey also suggested that public organisations must adapt the effect that management systems and other organisational institutions have on the PSM. However, they did not consider management systems as one of the predictors of PSM. The present study aims to investigate how the adoption of a management system, in this case the BSC concept, affects PSM. Following the suggestion by Camilleri and Heijden (2007)
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that the articulation of clear and unequivocal goals is one of the conditions needed to maximise the level of PSM, one of the benefits of implementing the BSC is that it renders the organisational objectives more easily understandable. The researcher thus expects that BSC implementation to be positively associated with PSM and proposes the following hypotheses:
H5. The SFO principles within the implementation of the BSC are positively associated with PSM.
H5a. The better the strategy translation through BSC implementation, the more employees’ public service motivation will increase;
H5b. The better the strategy alignment through BSC implementation, the more employees’ public service motivation will increase;
H5c. The better the realisation of strategy as everyone’s everyday job through BSC implementation, the more employees’ public service motivation will increase;
H5d. The better the realisation of strategy as a continuous process through BSC implementation, the more employees’ public service motivation will increase;
H5e. The better the leadership involvement through BSC implementation, the more employees’ public service motivation will increase.
4.3.4 The relationship between public service motivation and organisational