Different Ways of Doing Good: Public Service Motivation and Ethical Judgment in Public Administration

Overview

Research on public service motivation and ethical conduct has produced mixed findings, but studies often evaluate different behaviors against different ethical standards. We use the Do No Harm framework as a common minimum benchmark centered on avoiding unjustified harm. This approach allows us to compare judgments across administrative and general moral dilemmas without treating procedural compliance or desirable outcomes as sufficient evidence of ethical conduct.

Using the 2018 and 2019 waves of the Taiwan Government Bureaucrats Survey, we examine overall public service motivation and its dimensions: commitment to public interest, compassion, and self-sacrifice. The scenarios cover recruitment fairness, housing applications, campaign neutrality, whistleblower protection, and three general moral dilemmas.

Findings

Overall public service motivation is positively and significantly associated with Do No Harm-aligned judgments in six of seven scenarios. Commitment to public interest has a positive coefficient in every scenario, but its association is statistically significant in only three. Compassion and self-sacrifice show more varied patterns, including opposing associations in the torture dilemma.

The findings suggest that public-serving motives generally align with avoiding unjustified harm, while their ethical relevance depends on the dilemma. The analysis concerns associations with survey judgments; it does not establish causal effects on officials’ behavior or assume that respondents consciously used the Do No Harm framework.