Enjoying Police Duties: Public Service Motivation and Job Satisfaction

Abstract

Public service motivation briefly described as the motivation to contribute to society well-being is a continuously growing topic in the field of public administration. This concept, however, has not been widely applied to the distinct work environment of police forces. Addressing the gap, two studies look at the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction and the way this relationship is mediated by person-job and person-organization fits. The data comes from Warsaw (Poland) city police officers (N = 305) and from Belgian police officers (N = 207). The results indicate that in both cases, officers with higher levels of public service motivation also have higher levels of job satisfaction, even when different measures of public service motivation are used, which adds to the robustness of the findings. In both studies, this relationship is also mediated by person-job and person-organization fits.