How Confucian Traditional Culture Affects The Public Service Motivation Of Grass-roots Civil Servants

Public service motivation is a hot topic in the field of public management today.Some studies have shown that culture is an important influencing factor of public service motivation.Different cultural backgrounds shape public service motivation with different connotations and structures,but there is little good empirical evidence to explain this.To investigate the impact of traditional Confucian culture on the public service motivation of grass-roots civil servants in China.In this research,we discuss the relationship between the confucian traditional culture and public service motivation based on the theory of public service motivation and select the confucian traditional values contained at workplace as the entry point,and then construct an analysis framework and propose research hypotheses.The existing maturity scales are used to design the questionnaire,and we collect 519 valid responses from grass-roots civil servants in J County of Shandong Province through"Questionnaire Star" and other methods,and carry out statistical analysis on the sample data and discuss the results with the tools of SPSS24.0,AMOS 26.0 and GraphPadPrism 8.The empirical results indicate that the traditional Confucian values in the workplace have a positive impact on the motivation of grass-roots civil servants to provide public services.The dimensions of "leniency,benevolence,and altruism","respect for authority",and"acceptance of authority" have a significant impact,and the "leniency,benevolence,and altruism" dimension has the best explanatory power;The public service motivation level of grass-roots civil servants is at a good level,and there are significant differences in gender,age and working years.The public service motivation level of grass-roots civil servants aged 26 to 35 is relatively low.This research finds that the theory of public service motivation originated from the West and the confucian traditional culture in China not only have a logical fit,that is,both have the value orientation of "publicity" and"altruism",but also have a certain connection in content.The rational dimension,normative dimension,emotional dimension and the spirit of self-sacrifice of public service motivation are similar with the"harmony and middle","rites and righteousness","benevolence" and "selflessness" in the confucian traditional culture.Based on the research results,this paper finally gives several practical implications for improving the public service motivation of civil servants:shaping the professional quality of civil servants with the help of confucian excellent ideas,giving play to the positive influence of leadership authority by grasping the key minority,focusing on the psychological changes of young civil servants and giving timely guidance and help.The quantitative research of the relationship between the confucian traditional culture and the public service motivation of grass-roots civil servants not only helps to understand how the culture at the macro level affects the public service motivation at the individual level,but also enriches the empirical research results of public service motivation,and also provides a basis for further deepening the localization and cross-cultural studies of public service motivation.It is necessary for government and other public management departments to consider the importance of traditional Chinese culture in motivating employees to provide public services in practice.