Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

French, P. Edward

Committee Member

Rush, Christine L.

Committee Member

Travis, Rick

Committee Member

Wiseman, William M.

Date of Degree

5-17-2014

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

Public Policy and Administration

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Political Science and Public Administration

Abstract

This present study aims to identify the relationships between public service motivation (PSM), job satisfaction, and level of commitment for the study population of 139 executive directors (N=42) and full-time employees (N=97) working with the YMCA in either Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, or Tennessee. The study was conducted using an online questionnaire, where executive directors or a representative were contacted to attain consent prior to their participation in the study. For this study, the dependent variable (Global PSM) serves as a means to understand its influence on job satisfaction and level of commitment for the two-group (executive directors and full-time employees) sample population. Once considered to be applicable only to employees in the public sector, this study discusses the application of PSM to employees in the nonprofit sector using the research of Mann (2006) and Word and Carpenter (2013). The employment of PSM to the nonprofit sector guides this research to understand Global PSM’s influence on job satisfaction and level of commitment for executive directors and full-time employees. Moreover, Pandey and Stazyk (2008) posited job satisfaction and organizational commitment are viewed as correlates to PSM. Using ordinary least-squares regression (OLS), the findings for this study indicated four of the nine job satisfaction facets (nature of work, pay, supervision, and coworkers) were significant to increase the Global PSM of executive directors. However, none of the commitment components (affective, continuance, and normative) or demographic variables were found to be significant for this group. Likewise, the findings for the full-time employee group revealed nature of work and operating conditions as the two significant job satisfaction facets. Although slightly significant, normative commitment was the only significant variable of the three-component model of commitment when regressed together or with the job satisfaction or demographic variables in the study.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/17960

Comments

public service motivation||job satisfaction||nonprofit sector||level of commitment

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