Mission Without Merit? Public Service Career Satisfaction, Patronage Promotions, and Public Service Motivation

While merit-based personnel systems are widely linked to improved performance and reduced corruption, less attention has been given to how an erosion of merit affects civil servants. Drawing on psychological contract and distributive justice theories, this study links perceptions of patronage in promotion processes, where personalistic, relational, or political criteria are perceived to displace formal advancement mechanisms, to diminished public service career satisfaction. It further argues that those with high levels of public service motivation (PSM) may interpret patronage-based promotion as both a threat to their own careers and a violation of the public values that make government service meaningful. As such, the negative association between perceived patronage and career satisfaction may be particularly severe for employees with higher levels of PSM. Using a large-scale survey of South Korean central and local government officials, the study develops a patronage perceptions index using forced-choice responses about perceived promotion factors and presents empirical evidence for the theoretical model. This research provides novel insight into how personalistic practices in the public sector may weaken civil servants’ satisfaction with public service as a career and discusses future research questions relevant to safeguarding the integrity of human resource management in the public sector.