Above and Beyond Bureaucracy: Examining the Association Between Motivation and Prosocial Behavior in the United States Border Patrol
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2013
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Haverford College. Department of Political Science
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Thesis
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The Herman M. Somers Prize in Political Science
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
My thesis examines bureaucratic behavior in public bureaucracies, and specifically that behavior that goes above and beyond official role requirements in order to help others, whether that be a client, coworkers, the organization or society at large‐behavior called extra‐role prosocial behavior in the public administration literature. I attempt to better understand prosocial behavior by examining the connection to motivation. Drawing on the literature on motivation, I develop a series of hypotheses to test the association between various forms of motivation--specifically material motivation, solidary motivation, mission motivation, public service motivation, and task motivation--and two types of extrarole prosocial behaviors--dedicated behavior and mission--consistent rule‐bending. While the literature often examines the prevalence of prosocial behavior in public managers, I focused on street‐level bureaucrats, who have discretion and interact with the public in their day‐to‐day work. I selected U.S. Border Patrol agents as my case study. To test my hypotheses, I conducted two forms of original research. The Center for Peace and Global Citizenship funded me to go to Yuma, Arizona in January 2013 to interview retired Border Patrol agents and meet with current agents at the Yuma Station. I developed the survey based on the stories and experiences of the agents whom I interviewed. 233 agents from the Fraternal Order of Retired Border Patrol Officers completed my survey, and their responses were converted into indices and then used to run regression analyses. The results of the survey and interview data point to a wide variety of motivations in Border Patrol, with agents often joining for material and task incentives, but staying for these as well as solidarity and mission benefits. Agents generally reported high levels of dedicated behavior. The regression analyses, supported by interview data, show that all non‐material motivations increased dedicated behavior in ways consistent with each form of motivation. Material motivation was shown to decrease willingness to engage in dedicated behavior. Interestingly, motivation did not influence mission‐consistent rule-bending, and instead, leadership had a significant negative influence on rule‐bending. These results, particularly those about task motivation, which is an understudied form of motivation, point to avenues for future research. Finally, the research has important implications for Border Patrol in particular, as organizational trends threaten factors that were shown to increase dedicated behavior.