Behavioral public administration and employee motivation

This chapter provides an overview of literature studying the motivation of public sector employees from the viewpoint of the recently emerging subfield of behavioral public administration (BPA). The chapter is divided into an entry, four mid-sections, and a conclusion. The entry introduces the subfield of behavioral public administration and provides a review of the various types of motivation frequently studied in public administration research to create conceptual clarity. Section 1 takes stock of the most frequently used psychological theories in motivational research, thereby developing an encompassing theoretical account. The next section provides an overview of experimental research on motivation in public administration research, because experiments can be seen as a state of the art method in psychological and behavioral science. Section 3 takes a more critical stance. It discusses whether the integration of motivational research with theories and methods from psychology is really novel within the research on employee motivation. Section 4 is future-oriented. It identifies unanswered questions about BPA and employee motivation, thereby providing direction for future research. The chapter ends with the presentation of several concluding remarks.