Abstract
The objective of this study was to determine the relationship between public service
motivation and career engagement and to determine the amount of variance in career
engagement that is explained by public service motivation in a sample of South African
public servants.
A quantitative approach to research was employed to help answer the hypothesis and
objectives. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used as part of the quantitative
approach. A combination of snowballing and convenience sampling (n=304) of working
employees in the public sector was collected; however, data was analysed based on a sample
of n= 301.
The results indicated that there is a significant positive relationship between public service
motivation and career engagement. Additionally, the results from the simple linear regression
analysis demonstrated that at least a substantial amount of variance in career engagement can
be explained by public service motivation.