Public Sector Employees: Motives, Motivations and Causal Effects

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label Diverse autorenew 2025-09-29, 17:01 history_edu Ioana Dinescu
Understanding employee motivation is a key ingredient to understanding the performance of the public services a topic at the heart of public administration research. Classic literature suggests that public employees play a vital role in ensuring that the public services perform as intended by the democratic publics, while general work motivation theory explains how our motivation determines our work effort and behaviour.

But how can we more precisely understand the motivational forces underlying the public employees' performance? What are the main motivations that are controlled and/or activated by different management strategies? And what is the effect of the public employees' motivation on their performance?

Period
16-07-2014 - 13-08-2014 (4 weeks)

Target group
Master's students



Course aim
This course gives an overview of theory and empirical findings on public service employees motivation. The main focus is on the construct of employee motivation, with particular emphasis on the effect of employee motivation on performance. By the end of the course, the participants will thus have a substantial knowledge of employee motives and motivation in the public sector and their effectswhile simultaneously being able to assess the qualities of existing studies and research designs, and how a given study may possibly be improved.

Credits
10.0 ECTS credits

Course fee
EUR 0: Students on a bilateral exchange programme do not have to pay. Freemovers are obliged to pay participation fees while tuition fees only apply to freemovers from countries outside the EU/EEA/Switzerland.

Course leader
Mogens Jin Pedersen, Aarhus University

Aarhus University International Centre
Address: Hoeg Guldbergs Gade 4, building 1650 Aarhus C
Postal code: 8000
City: Aarhus
Country: Denmark
Website: http://www.au.dk/summeruniversity
E-mail: SummerUniversity@adm.au.dk
Phone: +45 8942 2320