Structural equation modelling: a silver bullet for evaluating public service motivation

The growing interest in public employee motivation and performance as a way to improve the quality of public service suggests the need to analyse different relationships. The overall goal of this work is to examine Public Service Motivation (PSM) and establish how it affects two positive outcomes, job satisfaction and individual performance, and two negative outcomes, resigned satisfaction and burnout. Firstly, this study aims to verify whether PSM positively influences employee job satisfaction and individual performance and, secondly, if PSM can reduce the risk of the two negative outcomes: burnout, which is a cause of people leaving their jobs, and resigned satisfaction, which in the long term leads to burnout. This analysis is based on a sample of 296 Italian teachers working in state primary and secondary schools. The collected data are analysed through structural equation modelling to establish the significant relationships among the mentioned variables. Moreover, partial least squares multi-group analysis was applied to investigate if there were significant differences between the two groups that belong to the variable relating to employee job tenure. Finally, suggestions for future research are offered based on the obtained results.