Building a Social Network Theory of Perceived Public Service Motivation and Organizational Citizenship Behavior among Public Sector Employees

Abstract

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Public Service Motivation (PSM) states that individuals are not only driven by their own interests but also by a unit contributing to society and helping others and this motivation is particularly high among public servants. The extant literature reveals that people at high levels of public service management are inclined towards Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) (Christensen & Wright, 2011). Built upon the theory of social network and considering the importance of PSM in public organizational life, social networking is integrated with PSM to verify its relationship and impact on OCB. This paper presents the conceptual argument that the perception of social networking provides an intuitive vision for content visualization and both the quality and value of relationships can be evaluated according to the levels of commitment towards public service management. These propositions have been developed to outline the relationship between PSM and OCB based on the deep-down concept of social networking. This paper concludes with the argument that in social network theory, advice and networking have a positive exchange relationship in which employees share resources like guidance, information, direction and support associated with their task; while adversarial networks represent negative exchange relationships that lead to behaviors such as interference, pressure, interruption and negative response. Therefore, it is very important to evaluate the types of social networks to determine the relationship between PSM and its behavioral outcomes.