راهکار های تشویقی بخش دولتی و تاثیر آن ها در رضایت شغلی: تفاوت های کشور Public sector motivational practices and their effect on job satisfaction: country differences

Introduction To meet the demands of today’s society, the strategic goals of public sector organisations (PSOs) have progressed from merely looking for efficient and effective service provision to truly providing public service, based on the theoretical framework of public service dominant logic theory (PSDL) (Osborne, 2010; Osborne et al., 2012). Among the innovations developed by PSDL, one is the acknowledgement of the role of public employees as internal customers (Azêdo and Alves, 2013; Hiedemann et al., 2016). Therefore, PSOs must encourage those human resource management (HRM) practices that positively affect the motivation and satisfaction of their human capital, which in turn will lead to better performance (Hung, 2012; Vandenabeele, 2009). The term “motivation” in this paper does not refer to the public sector motivation theory (Perry and Wise, 1990; Perry, 1997) but to the concept of an “individual’s degree of willingness to exert and maintain an effort towards organizational goals” (Franco et al., 2002, p. 1). Job satisfaction is considered as “a positive (or negative) evaluative judgment one makes about one’s job or job situation” (Weiss, 2002, p. 175). Subsequently, considering public employees as internal customers implies tailoring their motivation and satisfaction policies to their specific circumstances. A country’s cultural values could influence the perceptions of job satisfaction and its determinants, so public employees from different cultures may display different levels of job satisfaction, although the literature is inconclusive on this topic. Indeed, the phenomenon of globalisation and the wave of reforms in which PSOs all over the world are currently engaged have caused a worldwide interest in how to improve public service provision by enhancing public employees’ job satisfaction. Nonetheless, there is little research regarding how HRM practices affect public employees’ job satisfaction in a cross-national context, which might be useful to develop a universal construct. The following questions therefore arise: How should public managers motivate their internal customers? Does the use of specific human resource practices have a different effect on the job satisfaction of public sector employees under a cross-national perspective? Are these practices universal, implying that public sector culture is stronger than country culture and public managers can learn from other similar institutions in other countries? This study addresses these questions using a survey among the non-teaching staff of public universities in Poland and Spain. The data analysis is conducted using SmartPLS3, which fits small samples, and through a multi-group analysis. The results provide empirical information useful to policy makers interested in formulating a HR policy that caters to their employees’ needs and promotes satisfaction.