A Workforce of Cynics? The Effects of Contemporary Reforms on Public Service Motivation

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines how norms and intrinsic forms of motivation can inform agency-theory assumptions about how to manage bureaucratic misbehavior. In particular, the potential for public service motivation to mediate self-interested moral hazard is examined. Recent decades have seen the public sector move toward a market model, which has increased the opportunities for moral hazard by tying high-powered incentives to incomplete contracts. At the same time, the market model may crowd out intrinsic values that provide the best protection against exploitation of those situations. Notes As Brehm and Gates (1997) point out, the assumption that negative consequences will follow from public-spirited behavior on the part of the agent assumes a divergence between principal preferences that has not been well documented (and which may be mediated by the norm of obedience discussed above). Additional informationNotes on contributorsDonald P. Moynihan Donald Moynihan ([email protected]) is Associate Director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs and Associate Professor of Public Affairs. His research examines the application of organization theory to public management issues such as performance, budgeting, homeland security, election administration, and employee behavior. In particular, he studies the selection and implementation of public management reforms.