Driven to Serve: Exploring Meaningful Work for Doctors Through the Lens of Public Service Motivation

ABSTRACT This paper reports on a study of meaningful work amongst doctors in a non‐Western context. This study advances the current understanding of meaningful work by establishing a connection with public service motivation theory. By examining unique contextual features where societal, public systems, institutional, and individual factors are diverse and unique, we contribute to public service motivation theory in three ways. First, public service motivation theory argues that individuals are not only driven by self‐interest but also by a drive to contribute to society and to help others, and that this motivation is particularly high amongst public servants in the West. We provide a non‐Western perspective to augment this established conception. Second, despite the growing maturity of public service motivation research, significant gaps remain because much of the literature is focused on Western bureaucracies and tends to overlook frontline roles in public healthcare. We provide empirical data using frontline doctors in publicly funded healthcare hospitals from a developing country context. Lastly, we provide evidence to show the association between public service motivation and meaningful work, an association that has yet to be fully theorised or empirically explored in under‐resourced or crisis‐prone systems of developing countries where institutional pressures are more profound. This line of inquiry also links to broader debates within the public administration domain on the significance of contextualisation.