Public service motivation and government officials’ willingness to learn in public sector benchmarking process

Benchmarking between local governments has become an important topic in public administration. In benchmarking practice, local government officials play important roles in deciding what they learn, who they learn from, and how to adopt, and adapt to the lessons. However, less attention has been paid to why local government officials to willingly take lessons from their peer governments. Focusing on a particular type of motivational basis, public service motivation (PSM), this study found that PSM is positively associated with government official’s willingness to learn. Out of PSM’s subdimensions, in particular, only attraction to public policy-making shows a significant positive relationship.