Merit Pay, Public Service Motivation and Job Satisfaction: An Exploratory Study on Chinese Compulsory School Teachers

More and more public service units inspire their employees to further effort by merit pay scheme, but the motive initiated by extrinsic incentive institution could be more endurable and energetic only if it transferred into intrinsic motives. In this research, the compulsory school teachers were investigated by questionnaire to explore the relationship among teachers' perception of merit pay scheme, public service motivation and job satisfaction. The result of correlation and regression analysis proved that perception of merit pay scheme has significant positive impact on public service motivation and job satisfaction, and the public service motivation plays partial mediating effect in the influence from perception of merit pay to job satisfaction. It also indicated that the transparency, fairness and controllability should be fully considered when implementing merit scheme in the public service unit. Reasonable merit scheme can promote the transfer from extrinsic economic reward to public service motivation, which would stimulate more job satisfaction of the teacher.