A workforce of cynics? The effects of contemporary reforms on public service motivation

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. © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.