Exploring the motivational bases of public mission-driven professions using a sequential-explanatory design

This study disentangles the motivational forces that drive the preferences of public sector professionals engaging in mission-driven jobs. Building on self-determination theory, two discrete choice experiments and a qualitative inquiry show that nurses preferred jobs with less overtime, higher salary, visibility for the profession, higher social impact, numerous and frequent contacts with patients, and higher autonomy. Results also highlighted that managing more subordinates may not be unconditionally desirable. Implications stretch beyond nursing to other public professions in crisis and discuss the role of public human resource management in the broader human resource management literature.