Public service motivation: A study of the impact of job design and employees subjective well-being in a public hospital

Since Hawthorne studies, motivation in organizations has been one of the main concerns of organizational behavior scholars. However, the question that has not been resolved yet is: whether motivation processes in public and private sectors are different? If the answer is yes, what is the nature of motivation in public sector and what are the factors that influence public sector motivation (PSM)? Given that, the work conditions of a large number of public sector employees require them to serve the public, PSM as a subfield of organizational behavior has attracted the attention of many researchers in recent years. This research is aimed to examine the effect of job characteristics on public employees motivation in view of employees well being as mediating variable. The research population is the employees of Central Laboratory of Imam Khomeini Hospital (N=200). A sample survey was conducted using a standard questionnaire that was distributed among 133 employees. The results show that job characteristics directly has positive effect on the laboratory employees and indirectly through the mediating variable of employee well-being.