Undergraduate education in public administration and public service motivation: A quasi-experiment with the intervention of an introductory course

Abstract

This study aims to explore whether an introductory undergraduate course in Public Administration might be an appropriate educational tool for enhancing public service motivation (PSM) among undergraduate students. A quasi-experimental design involves surveying participants both before and after the intervention (taking an Introduction to Public Administration course) to examine whether their levels of PSM increase as a result of the intervention. The hypotheses were tested by comparing 96 students exposed to an intervention (experimental group) with 166 students who were not exposed (control group). There was no significant change in the total score of PSM and its individual dimensions before and after the intervention in both groups, and so the Introduction to Public Administration course was not effective in enhancing the level of PSM. The implications and limitations of this quasi-experiment are also discussed.

Keywords

public service motivation quasi-experiment undergraduate education in public administration introduction to public administration course one-way analysis of variance

Introduction

Public service motivation (PSM) represents an individual’s desire to serve society and others. In theory, it has been suggested that individuals with higher levels of PSM are more likely to engage in behaviors that benefit the public (Esteve et al., 2016; Kim and Vandenabeele, 2010; Neumann and Schott, 2021; Perry and Wise, 1990). PSM is an important study subject in the public administration field because it can contribute to attracting and retaining individuals who are capable of delivering on the complex objectives of public service (O’Riordan, 2013; UNDP, 2014). Over the last two decades, a large number of empirical studies on PSM have been conducted. Although American and European studies have been most common in early contributions, with increasing international interest in the ethics of public service, the incidences of PSM have been reported in various geographical settings around the world including Asia, Africa, and South America (Ritz et al., 2016).

Public service motivation is believed to be more state-like than trait-like and hence can evolve over time in response to institutional forces and management practices (Gould-Williams, 2016; Moynihan and Pandey, 2007; Perry, 2000; Perry and Vandenabeele, 2008; Vandenabeele, 2011). Despite the progress that has been made (Ritz et al., 2016), there are still some questions that have not been sufficiently answered as to how PSM emerges and how it can be cultivated. In fact, prior studies on the antecedents of PSM tend to focus on personal attributes or organizational characteristics because more attention has been given to identifying ways to attract, select, and retain people who are presumed to possess higher levels of PSM and to cultivate or increase the levels of PSM of such people once employed. However, relatively less attention has been given to exploring how public service values and ethics underlying the mission of public service can be developed and fostered in a pre-entry setting (Bozeman and Su, 2015; Wright and Grant, 2010). Furthermore, as many prior studies examine more non-educational institutions and processes such as family, religious affiliation, or voluntary organizations (Camilleri, 2007; Perry, 1997; Perry et al., 2008; Vandenabeele, 2011), the study on the effects of educational curricula is expected to add more knowledge to the current PSM literature.

Public service motivation is one of the few concepts that have origins in Public Administration (Perry and Vandenabeele, 2015; Ritz et al., 2016), but no studies are available on the relationship between undergraduate education in Public Administration and PSM. Public Administration is believed to contribute to building professionalism by helping students obtain “autonomous expertise (e.g., possession of the substantive expertise necessary to fulfill the administrative functions of the state),” as well as by helping them develop “professed dedication to public service and a sense of calling to the profession, or the service ideal” (Ponomariov and McCabe, 2017: 83). The key norms, values, and dispositions into which Public Administration students are expected to be socialized include but are not limited to the public interest, social justice, ethics, impartiality, social equity, and prosocial values. Through the processes of institutional socialization in the Public Affairs or Administration program, the pool of students who understand the value of being dedicated to public service as well as responding to community needs and as a result, who would display a strong interest in public service career is expected to increase. However, there are only a few recent studies that have looked into this issue by examining the impacts of Public Administration or Public Policy graduate programs (M.P.A or M.P.P programs) on students’ levels of PSM (Bright, 2016; Chetkovich, 2003; Kjeldsen, 2012; Ponomariov and McCabe, 2017). Moreover, their results were mixed as to whether those degree programs are the primary sources of PSM, and they point out the importance of studying more about the role of educational socialization in developing and fostering PSM.

Therefore, in order to fill in the gaps of prior studies, this study employs a quasi-experimental design that is used to develop more robust causal inferences and greater methodological capacity (Chen et al., 2021; Hansen and Tummers, 2020; James et al., 2017), and empirically examines how studying Public Administration influences students’ levels of PSM. In particular, this study aims to explore whether an introductory course of Public Administration at undergraduate level can be an appropriate educational tool for developing and fostering PSM among undergraduate students. The quasi-experimental design in this study involves surveying participants both before and after the intervention (taking an introductory course in Public Administration) to examine whether their levels of PSM increase as a result of the intervention. The hypotheses are tested by comparing students exposed to an intervention (the experimental group) with students who were not exposed (the control group). We expect to find evidence that Public Administration education results in significant differences in PSM between the experimental and control groups, testing the proposition that the PSM levels of undergraduate students increase through taking an Introduction to Public Administration course. As Wright and Grant (2010) noted, the use of quasi-experimental design has the important advantage of establishing causation in relation to PSM, especially when designing and evaluating the effects of interventions to increase PSM, which cross-sectional survey research cannot show. That is, the use of a quasi-experiment advances beyond existing correlational models to demonstrate the causal effects of PSM’s antecedents (Moynihan and Pandey, 2007).

The study was conducted in a public university in Seoul, Korea. Unlike cases of the United States where most public administration programs are found at the graduate levels, in the case of South Korea, most universities offer a public administration degree program at the undergraduate level. Also, South Korea has a long-standing Confucian tradition which values sociopolitical collectivism and attaches greater significance to educational obtainment (Lee et al., 2020). Under the influence of these positive Confucian values, the role of higher education in teaching ethical and public values has been emphasized. Also, government services have been highly reviewed among citizens resulting in higher aspirations for public sector employment among university students. Thus, this examination on the role of public educational institution in fostering PSM in South Korea would be a great addition to the current development on this topic.

Literature review: Educational socialization and PSM

Public service motivation is defined as “an individual’s orientation to delivering services to people with a purpose to do good for others and society” (Perry and Hondghem, 2008: vii). Perry and Wise (1990) suggested that PSM has rational, norm-based, and affective motives. Perry (1996) developed a 24-item measure of PSM with four dimensions: attraction to public policy-making, commitment to the public interest/civic duty, compassion, and self-sacrifice. Kim and Vandenabeele (2010) proposed that PSM is associated with self-sacrifice and three types of motives: instrumental, value-based, and identification. Kim et al. (2013) later provided a 16-item measure of PSM with four dimensions: attraction to public service, commitment to public values, compassion, and self-sacrifice.

There are a few prior studies that examine the impact of curricular activities of a degree program on student’s PSM. However, these studies do not produce consistent results. Although some studies found the positive association between having a degree in a social science field, a typical field of subjects for public servants and students’ level of PSM (Vandenabeele, 2011), some other studies found non-significant or moderated effects of curricula activities (Bright, 2016; Chetkovich, 2003; Kjeldsen, 2012). These inconsistent findings as to the impact of program characteristics on PSM may be attributable to differences in research subjects’ characteristics. For example, the study of Vandenabeele (2011) examined a group of civil servants in Belgium who already had selected a sector of employment, whereas other studies referenced here (e.g., Bright, 2016; Chetkovich, 2003; Kjeldsen, 2012) used students in public service-related graduate programs or vocational schools who already had public service or related professional jobs or who were expected to have a public service career. In the case of graduate students, they may have more opportunities for quality interactions with peers who already have public service jobs as well as other professionals including their instructors, all of which may result in double socialization; that is, socialization to their departments and their disciplines (Golde, 1998). As Bright (2016: 301) noted, “the development of PSM is more of an outcome of the quality of mentorship and interaction students have with their peers and professors than an outcome of the curricular requirements of degree programs.”

Another possible explanation for the inconsistencies is the variation of curricular contents they examined. For example, Chetkovich (2003: 665) in a study of the Kennedy School of Government also noted that one possible reason why experiences at school fail to promote a student’s public sector orientation is their first-year curricular focus on methodological courses with an emphasis on macroeconomics and statistics, which “make students more cautious about government intervention.” Kjeldsen (2012) examined the varying impacts of different programs on PSM where the core public service program includes medicine, nursing, and social work, and other fields include nutrition management, design and business, engineering, etc. She noted that students who are exposed to the complex reality of public service delivery by learning more about those professions may find conflict with their idealistic views on those professions and thus, they may not be affected by the PSM socialization processes.

During late adolescence and early adulthood, the social and personal identity is believed to be formed (Gurin et al., 2002). Thus, an undergraduate program is believed to heavily influence a student’s decision about the type of career by shaping their values as well as their occupational aspiration. In the undergraduate program, similarly to the graduate program, just as their peers and faculty members work as an important agent of socialization, the curriculum would place an important role in socialization.

Experimental design

Study background

Differently from previous studies that highlight the role of higher educational institutions in fostering prosocial/public values through socialization that includes social learning and social identification, this study focus more on the role of one specific course, “Introduction to Public Administration (IPA).” This course’s curriculum characteristic is believed to play a crucial role in shaping student’s levels of PSM in addition to such prosocialization effects. Although there are some recent studies examining the impacts of public administration-related or public service-related graduate level programs on students’ PSM levels (Bright, 2016; Chetkovich, 2003; Kjeldsen, 2012; Ponomariov and McCabe, 2017), those studies consider the overall impacts of such degree programs. In such cases, some of the required courses on public sector institutions or citizenship may be more relevant in explaining the linkage between the curricular characteristics and the prosocial attitudes of students. On the other hand, some other courses such as analytical methods may be less relevant in this regard. That is, less is known about the effects of the field of study or the course subject in shaping a student’s levels of PSM (Vandenabeele, 2011). Thus, to fill in these gaps, we try to examine the role of higher education by focusing on the role of IPA course, which has higher relevance in terms of a course subject as well as its contents and also is expected to have socialization effects given the higher levels of interaction required among students and instructors.

Intervention: Taking an introduction to public administration course

A three-credit, 15-week undergraduate course of Introduction to Public Administration (IPA) serves as a student guide to the academic field of Public Administration and as an informative session to equip students with a broad understanding of the public sector and public service profession in South Korea. It is one of the core courses required for all undergraduate students registered in the Public Administration program. Through this IPA course, students will be able to understand the major concepts in Public Administration, the academic foundations of Public Administration, the development of the field of study in Public Administration, the essential characteristics of the government system, and the intersection between politics and administration. The course also touches on the following topics: public personnel administration, bureaucracy and organizational theory, public policy process, public budgeting, local autonomy, e-government, performance management, and the relationship between democracy and public administration. We expect this introductory course to provide a theoretical foundation in Public Administration and familiarize students with the public sector.

Moreover, an IPA course is important to students who wish to become civil servants. The open competitive examination is a general principle of government recruitment to hire civil servants in Korea. The government rank-in-person consists of nine grades, ranging from Grade 9 (the lowest level) to Grade 1 (the highest level). Job candidates can enter through the open competitive examination to three kinds of grades: Grade 5, Grade 7, and Grade 9 (Kim 2010). The examinations are administered every year with a single- or two-rounds of written tests and interviews. Given the high level of job security and social reputation of civil servants, the examinations are highly competitive (Lee and Choi, 2016). Introduction to Public Administration is one of the subjects for written exams for Grade 9, and Public Administration is one of the subjects for written exams for Grade 7 as well as for Grade 5. For this reason, the IPA course is perceived as a basic academic class among undergraduate students who want to be public employees in the future.

The three sections of the IPA course were opened in the fall semester of 2017. Each course section was taught by three different instructors but utilized similar syllabi, lectures, and assignments regardless of the instructor teaching. The instructors were full-time faculty members and had more than 5–10 years of teaching experiences prior to participating in this study. They also have received good evaluations from the student. The course was delivered primarily through lectures, using a textbook as well as active learning methods, but the portion of the lectures was higher than the time spent in active learning. The way the IPA course is designed aims to equip students with theoretical and vocal focused outcomes which reflect knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to understand or perform the public service. Through lectures and readings, students are to be exposed to theoretical foundations and their contemporary issues. They are also required to participate in group activities where they choose cases with the most pressing issues facing government agencies or the public sector organizations in general. They then relate the cases to theories, analyze them, present their findings on areas for improvement or possible plans of actions in class and discuss their findings with other classmates. This group activity exposes students to problem situations relevant to course topics and enables either inductive or deductive approaches to learning. This activity aims to make students better understand a problem either derived or deducted from theories and empirical observations. This process allows for better understanding and illustration of theories and concepts. Moreover, by engaging in this group activity, students can experience in-depth social interaction with instructors and group members. Furthermore, they are required to submit reaction papers bi-weekly where they read assigned readings and provide their own critical reviews. Student evaluation was based on common course requirements: class attendance (10%), midterm exam (30%), final exam (40%), and case analysis and presentation (20%). In taking the IPA course, students are expected to understand the core mechanisms in public administration and can learn the knowledge, skills, and values necessary for effectively delivering public services and achieving public service goals, all of which are believed to be instrumental for shaping individual students’ attitudes and motivation.

First, the attraction to the public service (APS) dimension of PSM represents instrumental motives that “concern the methods to perform meaningful public service” (Kim and Vandenabeele, 2010: 703). Individuals with high levels of instrumental motives are likely to work in the public sector and to participate in activities for enhancing the public interest and performing community service. The students in the IPA course may learn the functions and roles of government and civil servants. They may understand what the government is doing and how the policy process and community activities are related to the well-being of people. Thus, they are more likely to be interested in working in the public sector and engaging in public service. We expect that the IPA course will contribute to enhancing the students’ levels of APS:

Hypothesis 1: The APS levels of the participants in the experimental group will be significantly increased by the end of the term.

Second, the commitment to public values (CPV) dimension represents value-based motives that individuals want to achieve public values through their behavior and actions. Individuals with high levels of value-based motives are more likely to internalize public values and to have a feeling of accomplishment when they contribute to realizing these values (Kim and Vandenabeele, 2010). The instructor in the IPA classes may explain why and how public interest and public values are important, and the students in these classes may discuss what kinds of public values are critical to solve social problems and how policy-making and implementation are related to specific public values through case analysis. Thus, they are more likely to be concerned about public values and how to enhance them. We expect that the IPA course will contribute to enhancing the students’ levels of CPV:

Hypothesis 2: The CPV levels of the participants in the experimental group will be significantly increased by the end of the term.

Third, the compassion (COM) dimension represents identification motives that concern individuals’ affective commitment to people or objects. “Affective bonding with others is the emotional basis of serving others” (Kim and Vandenabeele, 2010: 703). Individuals with high levels of compassion are more likely to do good for the identified objects such as the public, community, society, neighbors, or vulnerable people. The students in the IPA course may be exposed to major social issues such as the polarization of wealth, regional disparity, needy neighbors, welfare for the elderly poor, natural disaster, or environmental pollution. Thus, they are more likely to care about vulnerable people and society. We expect that the IPA course will contribute to enhancing the students’ levels of COM:

Hypothesis 3: The COM levels of the participants in the experimental group will be significantly increased by the end of the term.

Fourth, the self-sacrifice (SS) dimension of PSM is the foundation for realizing public service motives. On the basis of self-sacrifice, “individuals are likely to perform acts that are intended to do good for others and shape the well-being of society,” even with the loss of tangible individual rewards (Kim and Vandenabeele, 2010: 704). The students in the IPA course may learn about the tragedy of the commons (Hardin, 1968), the clash between public good and private interests, and NIMBY (not in my backyard) syndrome. They may discuss how to harmonize conflicting interests and to solve free-riding problems. They may have more opportunities in the classes to consider the public good rather than personal interest. They are more likely to put society and the community before themselves. We expect that the IPA course will contribute to enhancing the students’ levels of SS:

Hypothesis 4: The SS levels of the participants in the experimental group will be significantly increased by the end of the term.

Method

Participants

To test the hypotheses, a quasi-experiment (Cook and Campbell, 1979) with pre-testing and post-testing of two student groups was conducted at a public university in Seoul, Korea. There are experimental and control groups, an exogenous intervention, and measures of the effect of the intervention. The intervention comes from the outside, but assignment to experimental and control groups is not randomized in a quasi-experiment (Blom-Hansen et al., 2015; Cook and Campbell, 1979).

The participants for this study consisted of undergraduate students who are taking a required introductory course in each department’s first-year calendar. The sample was selected using purposive and quota sampling to include participants from various academic fields such as engineering, social sciences, and humanities (Babbie, 2013). This assignment procedure met the important criterion of preventing students from self-selecting into treatment conditions, as students were not aware of this intervention (Campbell and Stanley, 1966). The participants in the experimental group were taking an IPA course, while those in the control group were not taking an IPA course but taking other required introductory first-year level courses. In this semester, three instructors were in charge of four IPA classes. The pre-test included 322 students but the post-test included 262 students (participant maintenance rate: 81.4%): 96 in the experimental group and 166 in the control group. The number of participants in the post-test may have been reduced because some of them had withdrawn or did not attend that particular lecture when the questionnaire was completed.

Of a total of 262 students who participated in both tests, 51.1% were women and 48.9% were men. In terms of grade, 74.8% were first-year undergraduate students and 12.2% were second-year students, while 13.0% were third-year and fourth-year students. In regard to religion, 67.2% expressed no religion. The students in the control group were mainly from the departments of Electronics and IT Media Engineering, Business Administration, English Language and Literature, and Creative Writing. Those in the experimental group were mainly from the departments of Public Administration and Environmental Policy. A randomization check was conducted to find the statistical equivalence of the experimental subjects (Jilke et al., 2016). The results show that the two groups did not differ with respect to the participants’ gender, academic year, and religion. Table 1 presents the results of one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) estimations for each variable across these groups.

Table 1.

Sample characteristics (ANOVA).

	Control group	Experimental group	F	Sig.
	Mean (std. dev.)	Mean (std. dev.)	F	Sig.
Gender (1 = Female; 2 = Male)	1.46 (0.500)	1.54 (0.501)	1.709	0.192
Grade	1.42 (0.882)	1.48 (0.846)	0.266	0.606
Religion (1 = No; 2 = Yes)	1.34 (0.475)	1.30 (0.462)	0.382	0.537
Majors (Number of students)	Business Admin. (50) Creative Writing (37) English Language and Literature (21) Electronics and IT Media Engineering (44) Others (14)	Environmental Policy (21) Public Administration (61) Others (14)
Total	166	96

Procedures

The participants in both groups have been administered identical questionnaires before and after the intervention (whereas the control groups experienced no intervention). The pre-test was conducted in the first week of the fall semester, and 3 months later, the post-test was conducted in the last week of the fall semester. This 3-month interval was sufficient to examine whether the intervention had an effect on PSM. Any threats to internal validity arising from history, instrumentation, and mortality may not be plausible in this study (Campbell and Stanley, 1966). Even though there is a time gap between the pre-test and post-test period, history is not a main concern because there has been no particular event that may account for changing a student’s level of PSM while taking the IPA course and the time interval between pre-test and post-test is relatively short. Also, the measuring instruments for PSM remain constant for both the experimental and control groups.

In both pre-test and post-test, all participants were requested to answer a pen-and-paper survey. Although answering the questionnaire was voluntary, a few minutes of class time were dedicated in order to ensure a higher response rate. The questionnaires were strictly confidential and only used unique identifiers generated by each student for future reference. The cover letter outlined the research objectives, guaranteed anonymity, and requested participation.

Public service motivation was measured using 16 items regarding four dimensions: attraction to public service (APS), commitment to public values (CPV), compassion (COM), and self-sacrifice (SS) (Kim, 2017; Kim et al., 2013). The reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s α) of the four dimensions were 0.853, 0.812, 0.843, and 0.845, respectively, while that of the overall PSM measure was 0.903, in the pre-test. All items had a seven-point Likert-type scale, anchored from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).

Results

Quasi-experiments must deal with initial differences between groups. The first analysis was conducted in order to test preliminary differences between the experimental and the control groups in the score of PSM as well as its individual dimensions. Crosstabs tables were constructed to check any difference in responses to the PSM items between the control group and experimental group, as shown in the Appendix. Chi-square (χ²) was used to test statistical significance, and it found that the difference between these two groups is statistically significant at 0.01 with only one (CPV02) of these items (χ² = 13.907, df = 4, p = 0.008). A slight majority of the experimental group (56.3%) responded that they strongly agreed with the item that public servants must always be aware of the legitimacy of their activities, while slightly less than the majority of the control group (43.4%) strongly agreed with this item. However, there is no significant difference in all the other items.

The results of the pre-test (ANOVA) is shown in Table 2. The level of CPV as well as the overall score of PSM in the experimental group are significantly higher than those in the control group but there are no significant differences in APS, COM, and SS between these groups. Generally, the levels of CPV and COM are higher and APS comes next, while the level of SS is lowest among the individual dimensions of PSM, in both groups. It seems that students with high levels of PSM are more likely to take an IPA course or “self-select” a major in Public Administration or Environmental Policy as the learning process for becoming a civil servant. These results support the findings of Kjeldsen (2012) in Denmark that students enrolled in educational programs aimed at jobs with core public service delivery have fairly higher levels of PSM in their first year of study than those enrolled in other fields of study.

Table 2.

Results from pre-test and post-test (ANOVA).

	Control group	Experimental group	F	Sig.
	Mean (std. dev.)	Mean (std. dev.)	F	Sig.
Pre-test (A)
APS	20.109 (3.980)	20.750 (4.549)	1.415	0.235
CPV	23.235 (3.712)	24.604 (2.804)	9.815	0.002
COM	22.789 (3.725)	23.396 (3.236)	1.772	0.184
SS	18.199 (4.425)	18.802 (4.044)	1.203	0.274
PSM	84.358 (12.288)	87.552 (11.567)	4.281	0.040
Post-test (B)
APS	19.265 (4.522)	20.615 (4.501)	5.435	0.020
CPV	23.199 (3.637)	24.484 (2.820)	8.824	0.003
COM	22.223 (4.059)	23.281 (3.308)	4.713	0.031
SS	18.193 (4.306)	19.281 (4.504)	3.757	0.054
PSM	82.880 (13.105)	87.674 (12.023)	8.579	0.004
Difference (B – A)
APS	−0.836 (4.031)	−0.135 (3.796)	1.195	0.275
CPV	−0.036 (3.490)	−0.137 (2.898)	1.915	0.168
COM	−0.566 (3.563)	−0.115 (3.286)	0.057	0.812
SS	−0.006 (4.070)	0.479 (4.063)	1.034	0.310
PSM	−1.461 (11.055)	0.053 (10.191)	0.866	0.353

After 3 months, the post-test was conducted. Crosstabs tables were constructed to check differences in responses to the PSM items between the control group and experimental group, as in the pre-test. There were statistically significant differences in responses to the five items: APS04 (χ² = 14.137, df = 6, p = 0.028), CPV01 (χ² = 12.520, df = 5, p = 0.028), CPV03 (χ² = 9.696, df = 4, p = 0.046), COM04 (χ² = 14.841, df = 5, p = 0.011), and SS04 (χ² = 13.011, df = 6, p = 0.043). On these items, the portion of the experimental group answered positively was smaller than that of the control group, as shown in the Appendix.

The results of the post-test (ANOVA) indicate that still the level of CPV and the overall score of PSM in the experimental group are significantly higher, and in addition, the levels of APS and COM are also significantly higher than those in the control group. It means that the levels of APS and COM are slightly decreased in the control group during the semester, even though those are not increased in the experimental group.

Table 2 shows that there is no significant change in the score of PSM as well as its individual dimensions between the pre-test and the post-test in both groups. Whether students took the IPA course or not, their level of PSM was not changed during the semester. All hypotheses are not supported in this study. That is, this quasi-experiment indicates that the IPA course may not be effective in enhancing the level of PSM among undergraduate students.

Discussion and conclusion

This quasi-experimental study reports findings on the association between students’ taking the Introduction to Public Administration course and their levels of PSM. In order to have public employees with high public service spirit who would identify closely with their professions and eventually contribute to the greater quality of public services, it has been suggested to recruit and retain people with higher levels of PSM (Christensen et al., 2017). It is crucial for the government to have a better understanding of what work motives and career goals potential employees have and how they are attracted to public service professions (Ritz and Waldner, 2011). Given these circumstances, it might be relevant to examine university students as potential candidates for public service jobs, especially if Public Administration education is effective in socializing university students to public service and its values as well as nurturing their levels of PSM (Christensen et al., 2017; Ritz and Waldner, 2011).

In this study, we had expected to find differences between students enrolled in the IPA course and the control group on the measures of PSM after the intervention. However, this quasi-experiment shows that the IPA course has no significant effect on PSM, but the participants in the IPA course have retained higher levels of PSM than students in the control group. This means that the intervention was unsuccessful in enhancing PSM. We can say that the exposure of students to the IPA course may be effective in increasing students’ awareness of theoretical and practical aspects of public administration but not necessarily effective in developing their personal commitment to civic duty and responsibility, which may greatly account for changes in levels of PSM. We can explain the reasons why the intervention failed to affect PSM in three ways. First, the primary concern of the students taking the IPA course was to get a higher grade. They studied the class contents that would be on the tests, both the course exams and the written exams for civil service. They learned the theoretical and practical knowledge of public administration but it remained in their cognitive level only, not shaping their values and motives. Second, a lecture-based course was not effective enough in teaching civic duties and public values. Lectures may be useful for making students acquire and integrate new knowledge and thus understand public affairs as well as advance their knowledge on the public sector by delivering and communicating factual information. However, this learning method is passive in nature and lacks opportunities for active involvement by students which are suggested to be more critical for effective learning to occur. Even though we employed small portions of self-directed active learning by using small group discussions, the portion of its use was smaller than the one of lectures by 20% and in most cases, lectures by instructors were used. In addition, only learning and understanding what things are important is not enough to make students pursue and practice them. That is, instead of employing a lecture-oriented course, a combined active learning and lecture course may be more effective for instilling public values and fostering PSM for students. More active learning will be necessary to establish the motives to do good for the society and others. Third, the IPA course is not free from the civil service entrance examinations in Korea. Recruitment to the civil service is based on performance in open competitive examinations (Sundell, 2014). Without any irregularity or corruption, candidates are screened through three or four levels of open competitive examinations that test general knowledge and potential ability rather than specific, job-related abilities (Choi, 2020). The examinations are highly competitive, and therefore it is natural that the instructors teaching IPA course cannot help emphasizing what is important for the civil service entrance exam in their classes. The curricular content in the IPA course is more focused on preparing students to take the civil service entrance exam rather than helping them to internalize public values and develop PSM.

Alternatively, service-learning needs to be instituted for the purpose of enhancing PSM in undergraduate education in Public Administration (Imperial et al., 2007). Several studies documented the role of actual community involvement combined with an opportunity of self-reflection as part of a curriculum in fostering a student’s commitment to service as well as civic behaviors (Myers-Lipton, 1998; Rice and Brown, 1998; Waldstein and Reiher, 2001). These studies indicate that service-oriented learning may be superior to classroom-only instruction. Service-learning means “a teaching and learning strategy that attempts to integrate community service with an academic curriculum” (Celio et al., 2011: 165). For example, Myers-Lipton (1998) found in a study of college students that students’ participation in a service-learning program which allows them to learn social issues, actually participate in providing services, and reflect on their services has a positive impact on their sense of civic responsibility and commitment to civic behaviors. Seider et al. (2011) showed that a service-learning program guided by a clear set of values and interpretive framework can significantly impact the PSM of participants taking courses in philosophy and theology. Dinour and Kuscin (2021) found that a service-learning course in community nutrition can positively affect dietetic students’ motivation for public service. Undergraduate students may lack familiarity with and exposure to the roles they can play in the public sphere. There are advantages to having explicit connections between learning in the classroom and service in the society (Imperial et al., 2007). Participation in service activities and interaction with service beneficiaries may help students internalize public service values and have pro-social motivations. Educators in Public Administration should consider adopting service-learning methods into curricular offerings to enhance students’ PSM (Dinour and Kuscin, 2021).

Nonetheless, this study raises several important implications. First, it shows that taking an IPA course itself may not be sufficient to develop PSM. It suggests that the curricular content alone does not necessarily influence a student’s level of PSM. It is similar to the findings of previous studies in that the curriculum characteristics of degree programs does not influence a student’s level of PSM (Bright, 2016; Chetkovich, 2003; Kjeldsen, 2012). Second, it implies that a short-term education may not be sufficient to develop PSM. It suggests that PSM may be stable rather than dynamic (Vogel and Kroll, 2016) and thus a long-term approach is needed to develop PSM. Chen et al. (2021) also failed to find statistical support for the hypothesis that new public employees’ PSM will improve after they receive 5-week basic onboard training in Taiwan, when examining whether the pre-test–post-test difference is a result of training. Third, it indicates that students with high levels of PSM are more likely to major in Public Administration or other relevant academic disciplines for becoming a civil servant (Lee and Choi, 2016). It is important to develop undergraduate educational programs relevant to public service employment and make them more suitable to enhance PSM. Fourth, it suggests that advancing students’ theoretical and practical knowledge of public administration in a short period may not lead to enhancing their PSM. Thus, it reveals the need to examine whether the written exams for civil service are appropriate to select job applicants with high levels of PSM in Korea. Chen et al. (2020) showed that competitive and standardized public service exams can winnow out high-PSM candidates in Taiwan. The government needs to review the appropriateness of the current recruitment exams and take steps to screen in candidates with high PSM (Christensen et al., 2017).

However, the findings of this study need to be interpreted with caution in light of several limitations. First, given the relatively short time period between the pre- and post-tests, the test impacts may not be plausible. That is, this might not reflect the optimal amount of time required for the IPA course to exert its effects. One semester or one course is not sufficient for students to internalize public values and enhance PSM. If long-term course effects are to be discovered, a long-term, more intensive education or various socialization mechanisms need to be utilized rather than a short-term, simply knowledge-centered education to enhance PSM. Second, it may be difficult to generalize the findings because of the limited sample size. We acknowledge that larger sample sizes in many different universities would reinforce the findings. In particular, in order to ensure the reliability and validity of measurements, participating students should have completed the survey in the same environment. However, some students had dropped the course or left the institution resulting in a reduction in the number of post-test participants. Also, when examining the impacts of the course’s curriculum, the current study fails to consider the instructors’ varying teaching or socialization styles, which possibly affect the test results (e.g., learner-centered style vs teacher-centered style). Therefore, future studies can expand the current understanding by addressing these limitations and elaborating on educational socialization factors (peer interaction in the classroom, extra-curricular activities, etc.) and suggest the specific mechanism through which the public administration-related curriculum socializes the students in a way to foster their levels of PSM. In addition, we suggest that future studies would consider academic performance in or students’ levels of satisfaction with the IPA course when examining the course’s effects on PSM. Third, this study did not address how and what specific course contents deliver PSM related values, which will be a future study. It seems that the course contents such as publicness, public values, and ethics will positively influence students’ PSM, as Fuertes (2021) discusses the necessity of introducing ethics in public administration programs.

In sum, this study is one of the first studies to tackle the role of Public Administration education at the undergraduate-level in imbuing public values among students by employing a quasi-experimental design. Although findings fail to support the stated hypotheses, this study sheds light on the limitation of classroom-only instruction in predicting students’ levels of PSM. Considering previous studies’ findings suggesting the importance of service-learning in building students’ civic participation interest and public service values (Carrizales and Bennett, 2013; Dicke et al., 2004; Imperial et al., 2007), we have theoretical and practical motives to consider the role of undergraduate Public Administration education that enables students to learn the value of public services and transfer their knowledge to a real-world setting through reflection in cultivating their levels of PSM.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by the Research Program funded by the SeoulTech (Seoul National University of Science and Technology).

ORCID iD

Sangmook Kim

Author Biography

Taehee Kim is associate professor of public administration at Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul, Korea.Kiwhan Kim is professor of public administration at Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul, Korea.Sangmook Kim is professor of public administration at Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul, Korea.

Appendix:

Survey items and results of chi-square tests.

Survey items	Control group (%)								Experimental group (%)								χ²
Survey items		1	2	3	4	5	6	7		1	2	3	4	5	6	7	χ²
APS01: I want to contribute to social development	Pre	1.8	0.0	2.4	25.3	31.9	26.5	12.0	Pre	1.0	1.0	1.0	24.0	26.0	30.2	16.7	4.555
APS01: I want to contribute to social development	Post	3.0	2.4	7.2	28.9	24.1	24.7	9.6	Post	1.0	3.1	8.3	16.7	30.2	22.9	17.7	9.069
APS02: I want to contribute to realizing constitutional principles in society	Pre	1.8	0.0	3.6	27.9	28.5	26.1	12.1	Pre	2.1	0.0	5.2	21.9	22.9	29.2	18.8	3.989
	Post	0.6	1.8	6.6	31.3	28.3	22.3	9.0	Post	1.0	1.0	5.2	18.8	31.3	27.1	15.6	7.254
APS03: For me it is of major concern to protect the democratic governance system	Pre	1.2	3.6	6.0	27.1	27.7	19.9	14.5	Pre	2.1	4.2	4.2	29.2	20.8	24.0	15.6	2.512
	Post	3.6	1.8	7.8	30.7	22.3	22.3	11.4	Post	1.0	1.0	2.1	34.4	24.0	22.9	14.6	6.064
APS04: I want to work to make my country better	Pre	0.6	3.0	4.8	28.3	30.7	20.5	12.0	Pre	0.0	2.1	2.1	22.9	35.4	19.8	17.7	4.447
APS04: I want to work to make my country better	Post	3.0	1.8	4.8	32.5	27.7	22.3	7.8	Post	0.0	2.1	6.3	19.8	31.3	20.8	19.8	14.137*
CPV01: Equal opportunities for all citizens should be guaranteed	Pre	1.2	0.6	1.2	13.3	15.1	29.9	39.8	Pre	0.0	0.0	0.0	3.1	14.6	34.4	47.9	10.973
	Post	0.0	0.6	1.2	13.9	14.5	33.7	36.1	Post	0.0	0.0	0.0	3.1	10.4	36.5	50.0	12.520*
CPV02: Public servants must always be aware of the legitimacy of their activities	Pre	0.0	0.0	2.4	19.3	12.0	22.9	43.4	Pre	0.0	0.0	0.0	5.2	16.7	21.9	56.3	13.907**
	Post	0.0	0.6	0.0	12.7	18.1	28.9	39.8	Post	0.0	0.0	0.0	4.2	12.5	38.5	44.8	8.452
CPV03: I personally support the protection of individual liberties and rights	Pre	0.0	0.0	0.6	11.4	25.9	31.9	30.1	Pre	0.0	0.0	1.0	7.3	17.7	35.4	38.5	4.517
	Post	0.0	0.0	1.2	13.9	19.9	37.3	27.7	Post	0.0	0.0	0.0	4.2	24.0	33.3	38.5	9.696*
CPV04: We have to make every effort to pursue democracy	Pre	0.0	0.6	0.6	12.7	28.3	27.7	30.1	Pre	0.0	0.0	0.0	8.3	16.7	40.6	34.4	9.086
CPV04: We have to make every effort to pursue democracy	Post	0.0	0.6	1.2	15.7	22.9	38.0	21.7	Post	0.0	1.1	1.1	6.3	25.3	38.9	27.4	5.457
COM01: I feel sympathetic to the plight of the underprivileged	Pre	0.6	1.8	1.8	12.7	27.7	30.7	24.7	Pre	0.0	1.0	2.1	5.2	26.0	42.7	22.9	6.862
	Post	0.6	1.2	2.4	16.3	27.1	30.7	21.7	Post	0.0	1.0	0.0	10.4	30.2	32.3	26.0	5.129
COM02: I empathize with other people who face difficulties	Pre	0.6	0.6	3.0	10.2	27.1	31.3	27.1	Pre	0.0	0.0	3.1	7.3	20.9	38.5	30.2	3.842
COM02: I empathize with other people who face difficulties	Post	0.6	0.6	3.0	14.5	27.7	30.7	22.9	Post	0.0	1.0	0.0	9.4	27.1	35.4	27.1	5.731
COM03: I get very upset when I see other people being treated unfairly	Pre	0.6	0.6	0.0	7.8	23.5	32.5	34.9	Pre	0.0	0.0	1.0	7.3	20.8	28.1	42.7	4.453
	Post	1.2	0.0	2.4	13.3	18.1	39.8	25.3	Post	0.0	0.0	1.0	6.3	22.9	34.4	35.4	7.876
COM04: Considering the welfare of others is very important	Pre	0.6	0.6	0.0	12.0	24.7	40.4	21.7	Pre	0.0	1.0	1.0	4.2	30.2	43.8	19.8	7.549
COM04: Considering the welfare of others is very important	Post	0.0	0.6	1.2	16.9	23.5	38.6	19.3	Post	0.0	1.0	1.0	4.2	32.3	30.2	31.3	14.841*
SS01: I am prepared to make sacrifices for the public good of society	Pre	2.4	6.6	5.4	33.7	27.7	18.1	6.0	Pre	2.1	9.4	7.3	27.1	29.2	20.8	4.2	2.520
	Post	3.0	3.0	9.6	36.7	24.7	18.7	4.2	Post	4.2	1.0	8.3	26.0	33.3	16.7	10.4	8.871
SS02: I believe in putting civic duty before self	Pre	4.2	4.8	12.0	39.2	19.9	15.7	4.2	Pre	0.0	3.1	8.3	43.8	20.8	17.7	6.3	6.253
SS02: I believe in putting civic duty before self	Post	4.2	2.4	16.3	34.3	21.7	16.9	4.2	Post	3.1	6.3	7.3	30.2	26.0	20.8	6.3	8.155
SS03: I am willing to risk personal loss to help society	Pre	6.0	5.4	11.4	34.3	27.1	10.8	4.8	Pre	1.0	6.3	13.5	36.5	22.9	16.7	3.1	6.389
SS03: I am willing to risk personal loss to help society	Post	5.4	3.0	11.4	36.1	27.7	11.4	4.8	Post	3.1	2.1	8.3	38.5	22.9	18.8	6.3	4.633
SS04: I would agree to a good plan to make a better life for the poor, even if it costs me money	Pre	1.2	1.2	6.8	18.7	31.9	28.9	11.4	Pre	2.1	0.0	2.1	15.6	35.4	29.2	15.6	5.359
	Post	0.6	0.6	6.6	24.1	33.7	23.5	10.8	Post	2.1	0.0	0.0	18.8	29.2	34.4	15.6	13.011*

Notes: 1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree; * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01.

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