Proceedings of the 3rd Economics & Finance Conference, Rome

CIVIL SERVANTS MOTIVATION AND WORK PERFORMANCE IN ROMANIAN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS

ALINA CIOBANU, ARMENIA ANDRONICEANU

Abstract:

In times of globalisation and continuous change, public institutions face the challenge of satisfying population' requirements having reduced resources at their disposal. In such a context, in order to be able to provide qualitative public services to the citizens, public institutions need to focus on the only resource that can help an organisation flourish and successfully achieve their mission - the human capital. However, building and maintaining a capable and competitive workforce has proved to be an important challenge for public organisations. Romanian public institutions deal with high levels of employee fluctuation as large numbers of civil servants are leaving the public sector for better paid jobs in private companies. The objective of our research is to provide a comprehensive up-to-date analysis regarding the factors that motivate Romanian civil servants to efficiently and effectively perform their duties. The data analysed in our paper has been collected through a survey conducted between the 1st of July and the 31st of August 2013 in several Romanian public institutions. The questionnaire designed for this stage of our research contained six identification questions and ten items to be rated on a scale from 1 to 9 regarding the factors that influence civil servants' work performance. 120 civil servants filled in our questionnaire. The data has been analysed and processed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). We were interested to identify statistically significant associations among our research variables, and tested the existence of an association between control variables and dependent variables. The results of our research show that civil servants' workplace motivation is influenced by factors mainly related to day to day activity such as superior's leadership style, the content of the performed activity or the level of independence they enjoy in performing their attributions and to a lesser extent by factors related to professional development such as participating to professional training activities or career development opportunities. In conclusion, we can state that the persons who choose to work in Romanian public institutions are mainly driven by motivating factors such as work environment and conditions or the content of the activity performed. Our paper brings into academic discussion the situation of human capital in Romanian public institutions where increased attention needs to be paid to creating a motivational and challenging work environment, to encouraging professional development and performance in order to be able to attain strategic objectives and improved institutional results.

Keywords: human capital, motivation, work performance, civil service

PDF: Download



Copyright © 2024 The International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences, www.iises.net