Explaining Public Service Motivation: The Role of Leadership and Basic Needs Satisfaction

Abstract

Both leadership and public service motivation (PSM) are important issues in contemporary public administration. By connecting these issues, the aim of this article is to assess the impact of one particular type of transformational leadership behavior-promoting public values-on PSM development. Two hypotheses were tested with a dataset of 3,506 state civil servants in Belgium. The analysis shows that a positive relation exists and that it is moderated by a set of basic psychological needs (autonomy and competence), whereby it demonstrates the validity of an institutional theory of PSM.