The effect of local government employees' perception of transformational leadership and mission valence on public service motivation: An empirical study

This study aims to investigate the effects of transformational leadership, which is one of the modern leadership approaches, and mission valence, which expresses the degree of interest in the mission of the institution, on public service motivation (PSM). In this respect, municipalities, which are constitutionally accepted local government units in Turkey, were included in the scope of the study, and Pamukkale Municipality and Şanlıurfa Metropolitan Municipality employees were selected as the accessible study population. In the study in which the quantitative research method was applied, the analyses of the data collected through the questionnaire from two separate samples were carried out using SPSS and AMOS programs. In this study, with the aim of using a scale that is sufficiently known and knowledgeable in the literature, the "Transformational Leadership Scale" and the "Public Service Motivation Scale", which have been adapted before, and the "Mission Valence Scale", which has been adapted into Turkish within the scope of this study, were used. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted for the "Transformational Leadership Scale" and "Public Service Motivation Scale" used in the study, and as a result of the relevant evaluations, it was concluded that the measurement tools were reliable. For the "Mission Valence Scale", "psycholinguistic examination (language adaptation)" and "examination of psychometric properties (reliability and validity)" stages were carried out. As a result of the evaluations made by conducting Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) on the scale within the framework of the adaptation stages, the one-dimensional "Mission Valence Scale" consisting of 4 items has been proven to be a valid and reliable measurement tool in measuring the perceptions of value attributed by public officials to the institutional mission in Turkish culture. As a result of the research, it was revealed in both samples that public service motivation had a significant positive relationship with both transformational leadership and mission valence. Furthermore, it was determined that mission valence had a significant positive relationship with transformational leadership in both samples. Within the framework of the main purpose of the research, it was determined that the "individual consideration" dimension of transformational leadership had a statistically significant effect on the "empathy and self- sacrifice" sub-dimension of public service motivation in the Şanlıurfa Metropolitan Municipality sample. However, in the Pamukkale Municipality sample, it was concluded that transformational leadership had no effect on public service motivation. It was determined in both samples that mission valence had a statistically significant effect on the employees' public service motivation ("public interest" and "empathy and self-sacrifice") levels.