Organizational Cynicism and Public Service: Motivation Explaining the Role of moderating Employees' perceptions of Organizational politics and Organizational Goal Ambiguity

Managing the public service motivation of public organizations employees is the biggest challenge facing today's public sector managers because the existentail philosophy of public administration is to serve the citizen in the light of the presence of public servants with a high public service motivation. In this regard, the present study aimed to investigate the effect of organizational cynicism on the public service motivation, explaining the role of the perception of organizational politics and organizational goal ambiguity as moderating variables. In this research, by using a simple random sampling method, 926 employees of public sector under the supervision of 18 ministries of the country were selected as sample. A standard questionnaire was used to collect data. Validity and reliability of each of the variables were confirmed. Data analysis was performed by Spearman correlation test and stepwise regression using SPSS software. The results show that organizational cynicism leads to a reduction in the public service motivation, and the employees’ negative perception of the organizational politics moderates the relationship between organizational cynicism and the public service motivation in a negative manner. Additionally, the combination of organizational goal ambiguity with the perception of organizational politics intensifies this relationship.