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Enjoying Police Duties: Public Service Motivation and Job Satisfaction

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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.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Administration, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL, 33431, USA

    Palina Prysmakova

  2. School of Governance, Utrecht University, Bijlhouwerstraat 6, 3511 ZC, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Wouter Vandenabeele

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  1. Palina Prysmakova
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  2. Wouter Vandenabeele
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Correspondence to Palina Prysmakova.

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Prysmakova, P., Vandenabeele, W. Enjoying Police Duties: Public Service Motivation and Job Satisfaction. J Police Crim Psych 35, 304–317 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-019-09324-7

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