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This study defined and developed a four-item scale to measure motivation to serve (MTS) then correlated it with Cerff’s Motivation to Lead’s two scales as well as Affective and Normative Commitment scores. A convenience sample of 89 participants came from a non-denominational church in Oklahoma City, OK. The MTS showed significant correlation with Normative Commitment but not with the two Motivation-to-Lead scales or Affective Commitment. The benefit of this study lies in the development of a new scale to measure Motivation to Serve and the understanding that the new scale is significantly correlated with Normative Commitment.

This paper aims to identify distinct motivation profiles among non-executive directors and explores the reasons why non-executive directors continue to serve on boards of directors.

The analysis is based on a multiple case study in the context of German supervisory boards. The authors develop their primary insights from semi-structured interviews with 53 non-executive directors.

The findings indicate that non-executive director motivation revolves around material incentives, reputation, meaningfulness, congruence with firm goals and enjoyment. Three distinct motivation profiles emerge from the analysis, with each profile exhibiting a set of unique reasons to continue serving on boards.

Future research needs to test for the statistical representativeness of the findings and their performance implications, preferably in a shareholder-oriented governance context.

The study introduces a psychological angle to the debate about non-executive director motivation. The contributions include going beyond a bi-polar distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and draw attention to how motivation profiles relate to non-executive director’s intention to continue serving on boards.

The aim of this paper is to test how leader–member exchange (LMX) interacts with procedural justice climate to influence three types of employee motivation (i.e. achievement striving motivation, status striving motivation and communion striving motivation). Furthermore, this study empirically examines the indirect effects of LMX on customer loyalty through employee motivation and service orientation.

This study used a matched sample of 188 retail service employees and 376 customers from a large shopping mall in South Korea to test the empirical model. Structural equation modeling (SEM) and bootstrapping method were employed to test a series of proposed hypotheses.

The results show that LMX significantly enhances customer loyalty through two motivational dimensions and service orientation. In particular, this study shows that achievement and status striving motivation are directly related to service orientation, but communion striving motivation does not affect customer-focused service attitude. In addition, procedural justice climate serves as a critical moderator and synergistically interacts with LMX to influence achievement and status striving motivation.

This study offers new insight regarding how managers' roles in both individual (leader–member exchange) and organizational (procedural justice climate) level affect different forms of retail service employee motivation and service orientation, which in turn, result in customer loyalty.

The results suggest that when retail service employees perceive procedural fairness at retail stores, they are more motivated to work hard to complete their assignments and achieve their sales goals in conjunction with leader support. Therefore, managers must provide a clear guideline and procedure regarding salary raises and performance evaluations or engage in thorough discourse on such matters with employees prior to announcements of such decisions. Moreover, as retail service employees interact with customers in the frontline, and how they serve customers plays a key role in creating customer loyalty. Managers should encourage retail service employees to engage in service-oriented behaviors.

The results suggest that LMX facilitates more formal task-related motivation to achieve either tasks or status while it is less related to relationship-building motivation, which is a unique contribution of this study. The results offer better understating of how LMX differentially leads to specific types of employee motivation in the existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors influencing the decision of managers to work in the nonprofit sector and how these choices are shaped by intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Additionally, this research examines the impact of job choice motivation on social, community and professional outcomes and the unique characteristics of managers in the nonprofit sector.

This research employed data from the National Administrative Studies Project (NASP-III) survey, which measured the mid- and upper-level managers working in nonprofit organizations in Illinois and Georgia. The survey measured the manager’s perceptions of various organizational issues, including work motivation, mentoring and communication, career histories, hiring practices, and organizational cultures and structures. The data were then analyzed using a hierarchical regression model.

The findings of this research support the idea that intrinsic motivation is an important aspect of job choice motivation for individuals in the nonprofit workforce. In addition, the findings suggest other characteristics, including policies that enhance work life balance (WLB), advancement, and job security, are important to understand the job choice motivations of nonprofit managers. This research also found not all types of nonprofit agencies attract similarly motivated individuals, or lead to equivalent community outcomes.

The organizations represented in the NASP III sample included more membership and professional associations than the overall nonprofit sector. This over representation partially limits the generalizability of these findings but it also allows the research to more thoroughly understand this unique subset of organizations that serve predominantly the narrow interests of their members.

This research highlights the advantage nonprofit employers have over other organizations in terms of using intrinsic motivations to attract employees. However, the findings also suggest nonprofit organizations need to focus on human resource (HR) strategies including policies that enhance WLB, advancement, and job security to compete with other employers for talent. Finally, the research also suggests the need to tailor HR strategies to groups of nonprofit employees based upon important employee characteristics such as gender, job type, and prior career experience.

This study extends a well-developed body of knowledge on motivations and selection of career paths to individuals working in the nonprofit sector. It also suggests variations among employees and organizations matter in terms of the type of individuals attracted to particular career path in nonprofits. Additionally, this research suggests future research needs to include more nuanced examinations of the differences which exist among organizations in the nonprofit sector rather than simply focussing upon similarities across the most prevalent types of nonprofit organizations.

The public service motivation (PSM) theory implies that public employees are spiritual people called “public servants” who have a desire to affect the community and are characterized by compassion and serving others. Owing to their commitment to public welfare, spirituality is apparently inherited in public employees as an occupation/employment effort, which entails attaching a “meaning” to the work being done in the workplace for the spiritual satisfaction of the employees. A sense of well-being among the employees of an organization can prove instrumental in developing their motivation level and improving the quality of their services. The literature depicts that workplace spirituality (WPS) is a feature that enhances multiple forms of employee well-being (EWB). Considering the importance of these concepts in terms of enhancing the productivity of the organizations, the current study aimed to gain an understanding of the PSM together with two other positive attributes namely WPS and EWB and determine their interrelationship. The aim of this study is to examine a significant positive relationship between PSM and WPS mediated by EWB.

The study has been conducted in the context of the public sector of Pakistan where a sample of the academic staff of higher educational institutions in the Punjab province was selected through probability sampling techniques for conducting the survey. The data collected from 394 respondents from the selected faculties of the universities were analyzed using relevant statistical tools (SPSS and AMOS: 22) to answer the research questions.

This study supported a significant positive relationship between PSM and WPS mediated by EWB. The quantitative findings of this study, thus, demonstrated that the culture of spirituality in the workplace significantly affects the PSM of employees by way of creating a sense of well-being among the employees.

This study is unique as it serves as an effort to understand the spiritual experience of the public sector employees involved in public service. This infers that spirituality in the workplace improved employees’ well-being by giving them a strong sense of purpose and these employees in a healthy state of mind are more likely to perform above and beyond and have a high motivation to serve the public.

The present study aimed to find out the relationship of public service motivation (PSM) with other positive aspects, that is workplace spirituality and employee well-being among academic staff of public sector higher education institutions.

In order to capture the full picture of the institutional factors that may be responsible for initiating and improving public service motivation among employees, 23 interviews were carried out with employees placed in leadership positions in the public sector universities. The data were qualitatively analyzed through NVivo 12 to gain institutional perspective regarding various organizational factors that could influence PSM.

The finding of this study elaborates that, although PSM is a personal attribute of the individual, there are many other organizational factors that exert a substantial effect in promoting PSM. The results of qualitative data also affirmed a significant relationship between PSM and workplace spirituality (a type of organizational culture) and the influence of employee well-being in improving the motivation of public employees towards service provision.

The data were collected from the specific population that is academic staff of public sector universities which limits the generalizability of the results.

PSM is a vital concept in public organizations where individuals must understand and focus on public concerns to improve the quality of public service. Therefore, public sector organizations faced the challenge of nurturing an organizational culture in which selfless public service becomes the norm and individuals are driven by the effective accomplishments of their services. Therefore, an organization that is highly oriented towards spirituality likely to improve employee well-being, which is a challenging and important concept in organizations in promoting PSM among employees.

This study is unique in terms of identifying workplace spirituality and employee well-being as organizational influencers in promoting PSM among employees.

This paper argues for precision in citing. It proposes an approach to citation analysis that would encourage that precision, and contrasts this approach with one based on inferred motivations for citing. It argues that it is misguided to classify citation‐signallers by the nature of the motivations inferred to underlie their use, the inference process being both philosophically and methodologically less satisfactory than the approach this paper proposes; and that, moreover, it is unnecessary, since certain formal characteristics of citation‐signallers of themselves provide ample means of classification.

Customer value creation is dependent on a firm’s capacity to fulfil its brand promises and value propositions. The purpose of this paper is to explore frontline employees’ (FLEs’) motivation to align with value propositions.

The paper explores FLEs’ motivation to align with a firm’s value propositions as operationalised brand promises. A longitudinal, three-phase case study was conducted on a business-to-business company in the building and technical trade sector.

This study reveals factors that foster and weaken employees’ motivation to align with a firm’s brand promises and value propositions. The findings show that co-activity and authentic, practice-driven promises and value propositions foster FLEs’ motivation to uphold brand promises and value propositions, whereas an objectifying stance and power struggle weaken their motivation.

The study indicates that a bottom-up approach to strategising is needed and that FLE is to be engaged in traditional managerial domains, such as in developing value propositions. By creating space and agency for FLE in the strategising process, their motivation to align with value propositions is fostered. Four motivational modes are suggested to support bottom-up strategising.

The paper is unique in its focus on FLEs’ motivation. Developing value propositions traditionally falls within the domain of management strategising, while employees are ascribed the role of enactment. Contrary to the established norm, this paper highlights employees’ active role in strategising and developing value propositions.

The purpose of the present study is twofold. First, the authors examine the potential mediating role of promotion focus in terms of the relationship between transformational leadership and work engagement. Second, the authors set out to examine whether the indirect effect of transformational leadership and follower work engagement through promotion focus is stronger when followers' public service motivations are higher versus lower.

The present study examines the association between transformational leadership behavior and employees' work engagement. Data included measures of transformational leadership behavior and promotion focus as well as public service motivation and work engagement. Utilizing a field sample of 316 employees, the study tested the proposed relationships with robust data analytic techniques. Results were consistent with the hypothesized theoretical framework, in that promotion focus mediated the relationship between transformational leadership behavior and work engagement stronger when public service motivation was high and weaker when public service motivation was low. Based on the findings, the study concludes that the connection between transformational leadership behavior and work engagements partially mediated by promotion focus and this mediated connection is stronger when employees' public service motivation is high and weak when employees' public service motivation is low—thereby yielding a pattern of moderated mediation.

The study findings suggest five main conclusions. First, consistent with previous studies (Aryee et al., 2012; Bui et al., 2017; Hetland et al., 2018; Li et al., 2021; Ng, 2017; Tims et al., 2011; Zhu et al., 2009), the study found a positive relationship between transformational leadership and employees' work engagement. Second, along the same lines of previous research (Brockner and Higgins, 2001; Hetland et al., 2018; Johnson et al., 2017; Kark et al., 2018; Tung, 2016), this study found a positive association between transformational leadership and employees' promotion focus. Third, as hypnotized, the study found a positive association between employees' promotion focus and their work engagement. Fourth, as hypothesized using regulatory focus theory, promotion focus positively mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and employees' work engagement. This result elucidates the underlying mechanism that enables leadership to influence employees' work engagement, particularly, through the self-regulatory promotion focus. The result demonstrates that leadership relates to and affects basic motivations of the promotion systems, which have been known as a basic human need for development and growth. The study demonstrates that leaders may be able to promote followers' motivations by provoking a promotion focus frame and this motivational frame further shapes followers' outcomes in terms of employees' work engagement. Hence, this finding support previous research claiming that promotion focus acts as a mediating mechanism in the relationship between transformational leadership and various outcomes(e.g. Johnson et al., 2017; Kark et al., 2018). However, this study adds significantly to existing research by being the first study to empirically test and pay attention to the promotion focus frame as the underlying psychological mechanism through which transformational leaders motivate followers to higher levels of work engagement. Finally, consistent with the study hypothesis, public service motivation has a moderating effect on the promotion focus-work engagement association. In addition, as the study hypothesized, public service motivation has a moderating effect on the mediating relationships between transformational leadership and employees' work engagement through promotion focus in public sector organizations. It appears that the relationship between transformational leadership and followers' work engagement through promotion focus is enhanced by the role of employees' PSM. In other words, the employees' public service motivation increases employee engagement further for employees with high situational promotion focus than for employees with a low situational promotion focus, which could be explained by the fact that more public service motivation is more meaningful to followers with promotion focus motivational framework to be more engaged. That is, public servants who are predisposed to respond to motives grounded primarily or exclusively in public institutions and organizations are more engaged at work due to their self-regulatory promotion focus spirit. This result is in congruence with findings that indicate that PSM is an important driver of organizational performance and has a positive impact on organizational behavior (Ritz et al., 2016). This finding does provide support to Bakker's (2015) proposition that PSM may strengthen the positive relationship between personal resources (e.g. optimism and self-efficacy) and work engagement because public servants with high levels of enduring PSM find their work important and meaningful. Therefore, they are likely to invest their resources in public service work, be engaged in their work and perform well.

First, it examines the extent to which transformational leadership contributes to employee work engagement. That is, the current study adds to the literature by using promotion focus attributes to probe the underlying mechanism through which transformational leaders enhance employee engagement in the workplace (Kark and van Dijk, 2019). Second, by combining insights obtained from the literature on the self-regulatory theory (Higgins, 1997) and the PSM theory (Perry and Wise, 1990), this study adds to work engagement literature by showing the importance of PSM as an institutional factor in work engagement. Lastly, the study expands the transformational leadership literature by using a moderated mediating model that recognizes PSM as a situational variable in the mediating relationship between transformational leadership and employee engagement.

The results have several implications for practice. Findings reveal that transformational leaders can enhance follower work engagement by inducing their promotion focus orientation. Managers can, therefore, display more transformational behaviors, such as providing a compelling vision, communicating high expectations, promoting new ideas and giving personal attention to each employee in the workplace. In addition, managers may develop a promotion-focus orientation among their followers by appealing more to their ideals and aspirations than to their duties and responsibilities (Brockner and Higgins, 2001). Organizations, on the other hand, could offer leadership training and development programs designed to enhance transformational leadership Behaviors. As for employees' PSM, public organizations have to be more creative in attracting, selecting and retaining employees with high levels of public service motives (Kim, 2021). Public organizations can also train their employees on public service values and enhance their incentives structures to align their motivational predispositions with the organization mission and values.

The present study adds to the existing theory in two ways. First, despite significant progress in exploring the process and boundary conditions for transformational leadership with beneficial work behaviors, the study findings paid attention to the underlying psychological mechanism, precisely the self-regulatory promotion focus frame through which transformational leaders motivate followers to higher levels of work engagement. A second theoretical contribution of the present study is that it adds to the long line of research supporting a more concerted effort to understand both the moderating and mediating mechanisms that link transformational leadership to follower outcomes. By using the moderated mediating model, this study shows that transformational leaders can induce a promotion focus within followers who have developed a public service motivation profile to be more willing to engage in their organizations. The current study also has several practical implications that can be drawn from the study findings. First, organizations should become more sensitive to their employees' (promotional and preventive) self-regulatory foci. Managers should be trained to be strategically oriented toward people's growth and development. Second, by serving as role models, managers can shape their subordinates' regulatory foci. The more managers' actions suggest that they are focused on promotion, the more likely it is that their subordinates will follow suit. Third, managers may emphasize the use of positive feedback, such as praise, by giving it when employees succeed and withholding it when they fail. This feedback style is more likely to elicit a promotion focus, especially if the praise for success focuses on what the employee was able to accomplish (e.g. “You aided in the advancement of an important task!”) rather than negative occurrences that the employee was able to avoid (e.g. “You were extremely cautious and as a result, you avoided making the wrong judgment.”) (Brockner and Higgins, 2001). Moreover, the moderating role of public service motivation in the effects of transformational leadership on work engagement through a promotion focus mechanism suggests that managers should not assume all employees would engage in their work similarly to their transformational leadership behaviors. Managers may find that followers who have values that are consistent with public service are more inclined to their promotion focus frame and thus are likely to internalize both motivations, which ultimately leads to more work engagement. As a result, managers should help employees, for example, feel a sense of accomplishment and recognize that they are contributing to society as an intrinsic reward. Finally, human resource managers must be mindful of their selection and placement decisions. Ensure that members are highly motivated to serve in the public sector and have the desired regulatory focus.

This paper aims to examine how psychological need satisfaction (PNS) relates to the display of servant leadership (SL) behavior through the motivation to serve (MTS) and non-calculative motivation to lead (MTL).

Data were collected using an electronic online questionnaire completed by 125 individuals from various organizations and industries. Data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and regression analysis.

PNS, MTS and non-calculative MTL were found to relate positively to the display of SL behavior. Moreover, both MTS and non-calculative MTL were found to mediate fully the relationship between PNS and SL.

This study is one of the first to investigate the motivational antecedents of SL. Moreover, it is the first to empirically study PNS as an antecedent of SL. The findings emphasize the importance of a leader's PNS in their motivation to display SL behavior, implying that a positive work environment is conducive to SL.