Motivation for Public Service in Chilean Civil Servants

In the last thirty years the debate in the field of public administration in Latin America has focused on how to introduce reforms in the public sector inspired by the New Public Management. Indeed, most public administrations have focused almost exclusively on introducing such type of reforms, ignoring a number of alternatives that have emerged in the academic debate. One of these alternatives is the public service motivation approach that analyzes how certain intrinsic factors, directly associated with the notion of public service, motivate the behavior of civil servants. This article aims to foster a Latin American debate on how to design and implement human resource policies based on the theory of public service motivation. Based on a non-probabilistic sample with 172 responses, this work identifies a number of public service motivation factors among Chilean civil servants. The findings show that attraction to public policies, commitment to the general interest, and compassion are as powerful factors as love for money. At the same time, the results show that self-sacrifice does not motivate Chilean civil servants. Based on these findings, a discussion on public service motivation as a useful approach for redesigning human resources policies is presented.