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The importance of self-control failure and employee outcomes in public sector organizations in China is increasing. In this study, drawing on ego depletion theory and public service motivation (PSM) literature, we proposed that PSM would serve as a buffer against the detrimental effect of ego depletion on self-control. We used an experimental design to manipulate ego depletion with 95 Chinese public servant participants. Results showed that self-persuasion intervention can increase state PSM, and this contributes to higher self-control performance after an act of self-control. Results also indicated that higher trait PSM significantly correlates with higher self-control performance after ego depletion. Implications for cultivating PSM of employees in public sector organizations in China are discussed.
Keywords
public service motivation; public sector organization; ego depletion; self-control; self-control failure; selfpersuasion intervention
Public servants in China are facing various challenges. They are not only required to control their emotions and suppress their desires at work, but also to handle work-related stress, and manage interpersonal relationships (Song, Zhang, & Zhang, 2014). At the same time, public servants are beset with temptations such as surfing the Internet and taking a nap during office hours (Bucciol, Houser, & Piovesan, 2013). Researchers have found that these efforts exhaust self-control resources, resulting in poor work performance and self-control failure (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998). Self-control failure is linked to mental and behavioral problems such as procrastination, substance addiction, aggressive behavior, and high-risk sexual behavior (DeBono, Shmueli, & Muraven, 2011). Lu and Huang (2009) have pointed out that in public sector organizations in China, self-control failure is usually correlated with the acceptance of bribes, corruption, neglect of duty, and poor work performance. Therefore, it is important to find ways to curb self-control failure among public servants.
Ego depletion theory is the most efficient framework for understanding self-control failure (Baumeister, Tice, & Vohs, 2018), and of which the central idea is that acts of self-control, such as suppressing emotions and resisting temptation, draw upon a limited self-control resource (Baumeister et al., 1998). When individuals engage in continuous self-control, their performance in subsequent self-control tasks will decrease, because engaging in self-control temporarily depletes the willpower resource, and thereby impairs subsequent self-control tasks (Baumeister et al., 2018). For example, when individuals work overtime, as they are...