A Study of Work Incentives and Job Satisfactions in a Department of the New Zealand Public Service

Abstract

An aspect of the vast increase in the number of public servants employed in New Zealand: 1939, 17,308; 1949, 31,155; is an increasing realisation of the importance of this group in maintaining the smooth working of many aspects of the country's economy. Now that most people come into frequent contact with Government services in some form or other, and now that the public servants themselves have become increasingly active in putting forward their claims, I think that there is growing interest as to the type of person who enters the Public Service and makes it his life's career. There is little reliable information available in this connection, and, in fact, the literature on Government employees in all countries is singularly sterile. To my knowledge there is no comprehensive and thorough study of Public Service work incentives available. As May and Doob remark 'It is perfectly appalling to note the lag between the increase in the number of civil servants and the static condition of our psychological knowledge concerning their behaviour.' Obviously if this large body of public servants is to work at a high level of efficiency, it will have to receive certain satisfactions from its conditions of employment. From the considerable amount of unrest existing at the present time in the Public Service (which is readily apparent to anyone working in the Service, or to the reader of "The Public Service Journal" - the official organ of the New Zealand Public Service Association (Inc)), it would seem that these satisfactions are not being attained. Further, the New Zealand Public service at present faces considerable hostility from the Press and from a large body of the general community, which is not a little suspicious of the functions of, and, indeed, of the necessity for, the vast Departments of State in New Zealand.