Public Service Motivation Research: Lessons for Practice 529 Public Administration Review, Vol. 77, Iss. 4, pp. 529–542. © 2017 by The American Society for Public Administration. DOI: 10.1111/puar.12796. James L. Perry is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington. He is editor in chief of Public Administration Review. E-mail: perry@indiana.edu Laurie Paarlberg is associate professor in the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University. She teaches courses in nonprofit and public management. Her nonprofit research focuses on the changing structure of local philanthropic systems. E-mail: l.paarlberg@tamu.edu Robert K. Christensen is associate professor in Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management. His research interests include attraction, motivation, and work behaviors related to public service careers and organizations. He is a research fellow at Arizona State University’s Center for Organization Research and Design and coresearcher at Seoul National University’s Center for Government Competitiveness. He and James L. Perry are coeditors of Wiley’s Handbook of Public Administration, 3rd edition (2015). E-mail: rkc@byu.edu Theory to Practice Abstract: Public service motivation research has proliferated in parallel with concerns about how to improve the per- formance of public service personnel. However, scholarship does not always inform management and leadership. This article purposefully reviews public service motivation research since 2008 to determine the extent to which researchers have identified lessons for practice. The results of the investigation support several lessons—among them using public service motivation as a selection tool, facilitating public service motivation through cooperation in the workplace, conveying the significance of the job, and building leadership based on public service values. These results are impor- tant because they offer evidence that the field is coalescing around tactics that managers and leaders can use to address enduring concerns about employee motivation in the public sector. They also prompt us to articulate ideas that can guide a tighter integration of research and practice moving forward. Practitioner Points • Employee public service motivation (PSM) is changeable by both intended and unintended organizational and management practices. • Attracting and retaining employees with high PSM is a reliable way to enhance employee performance and agency mission accomplishment. • Organizations that intentionally nurture PSM develop stronger ties between organizational and employee values and goals. • Relationships between employees and service beneficiaries should be leveraged for motivational advantages. • Leaders should communicate and model public service values. Hal G. Rainey, Editor Robert K. Christensen Brigham Young University Laurie Paarlberg Texas A&M University James L. Perry Indiana University, Bloomington Public Service Motivation Research: Lessons for Practice G overnments around the world continue to be attentive to an issue that is as old as the field of public administration: how to motivate employees who are doing the public’s business. Recent headlines in the United States, for example, have prominently raised the failures of traditional incentives in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the challenges of motivating employees (Moynihan, DeLeire, and Enami 2015). In Great Britain, pressure to admit patients to emergency rooms within four hours of their arrival to improve the speed of health care delivery has led to ambulances delaying the arrival time of patients to meet performance targets (Shaw, Taylor, and Dix 2015). In Italy, performance schemes implemented in the 1990s have led to public health employee bonuses awarded either uniformly or based on seniority rather than performance (Micali 2009). In the 1980s, in the aftermath of experiments such as the U.S. Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of 1978, public administration scholars recognized the limitations of the application of traditional motivational schemes in the public sector (Pearce and Perry 1983; Perry, Petrakis, and Miller 1989). Traditional systems were largely adapted from the private sector. Designed around self-interest, extrinsic, usually pecuniary incentives, and a high degree of organizational control over prescribed behaviors, these practices generally fell far short of expectations to transform employee performance in government organizations. For example, more recent studies suggest that the negative effects of pay for performance are stronger in public sector than in private sector organizations (Frey, Homberg, and Osterloh 2013). In general, the importation of private sector management has not always yielded benefits for performance in the public sector (Weibel, Rost, and Osterloh 2010). The failings of the CSRA and other initiatives like it triggered new research about public service motivation (PSM) (Perry and Wise 1990) that has flourished for a quarter century. The research on public service motivation has grown to unexpected levels. Ritz, Brewer, and Neumann (2016) put the volume of research in 2013 and 2014