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For public causes or personal interests? Examining public service motives in the Chinese context
Author(s) -
Sun Judy Yi,
Gu Qinxuan
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
asia pacific journal of human resources
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.825
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1744-7941
pISSN - 1038-4111
DOI - 10.1111/1744-7941.12119
Subject(s) - generalizability theory , china , civil service , public service motivation , public service , civil servant , government (linguistics) , proactivity , public relations , competence (human resources) , sample (material) , scale (ratio) , context (archaeology) , job security , chinese culture , psychology , social psychology , political science , politics , public sector , law , biology , paleontology , work (physics) , philosophy , linguistics , chemistry , engineering , developmental psychology , chromatography , quantum mechanics , mechanical engineering , physics
The western concept and scale of public service motivation ( PSM ) have recently been generalized to China. We analyze the western‐centric PSM scale in the Chinese cultural, historical, and sociopolitical contexts. We find that PSM scale developed in the United States has limited applicability and generalizability in China. Instead, we adopt the career orientation inventory as an alternative to measure Chinese PSM with a sample of 403 government employees in relation to their job and career satisfactions and job involvement. We found that lifestyle, security and stability, technical/functional competence and service dedication to a cause were dominating motives for Chinese civil servants studied. The results not only partially explained the recent puzzling ‘civil servant fever’ phenomenon taking place in China, but also demonstrated that not all western developed scales could be directly adopted to the Chinese contexts. We offer important implications and future directions for research on PSM in the Chinese context.