Why is the Public Sector the Employer of Choice among Women in the Middle East? A Gendered Qualitative Inquiry into PSM in a Global Context

Introduction

Literature on public service motivation (PSM) has been thriving in the public human resource management (HRM) field, with the exception of two key domains. The first is in providing a gendered understanding of PSM that would acknowledge the historic limitations of women’s physical and social boundaries and their competing productive and reproductive roles (DeHart-Davis et al., 2006). Although gender differences in PSM have been highlighted in a number of studies (e.g., Bright, 2005; Moynihan & Pandey, 2007), an in-depth understanding of the gender dimension remains largely lacking (DeHart-Davis et al., 2006). The second is in understanding PSM in contexts outside the countries of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Van der Wal (2015) describes the situation of this literature wondering if it is “all quiet on the non-Western front” on PSM. While these two key areas remain understudied, researchers of PSM continue to debate the genealogy of the concept; whether it should be grounded in public institutions or should include the private and the not-for-profit sectors (e.g., Bozeman & Su, 2015; Houston, 2011; Perry, 2014); and whether PSM should include intrinsic and extrinsic job factors or be limited to altruistic motives (e.g., Perry, 2014; Perry & Wise, 1990; Rainey & Steinbauer, 1999; Vandenabeele, 2007).

Informed by these debates and the need for a more nuanced examination of the dynamics of gender and PSM, this article seeks to contribute to the scholarship on PSM by elaborating on its relevance to the experience of educated women in Arab countries. The public sector is the key employer of educated women in the Arab world (Assaad & Barsoum, 2019; OECD/CAWTAR, 2014). A gendered reading of PSM is particularly lacking in this context, despite the predominance of public sector employment among educated women. What motivates these women to join the public sector? Is this experience relevant to the growing and thriving literature on PSM? The Arab region is no exception to the quietness on PSM outside the OECD, with very few studies emerging about the topic (e.g., Barsoum, 2016). While similar questions have been addressed by many PSM studies in other contexts (e.g., Vandenabeele, 2008; Vandenabeele et al., 2004; Yung, 2014), there is a research vacuum in non-Western contexts about these issues. Methodologically, this article provides much needed qualitative data to support the scholarship on PSM (Ritz, 2011), particularly in a less studied context.

The qualitative data presented in this article highlight three interrelated categories of motivational factors to join the public sector among educated women in the region. ¹ The first pertains to what can be termed as “pure public service motivation” (borrowing from Perry, 2014), where interviewed educated women discuss commitment to serve their countries and communities. The second set of motivational factors relates to gender-specific issues of work-life balance in the public sector due to its shorter work days and the appropriateness of the work space to gender norms. The third set of incentives focuses on extrinsic factors of job security, income, and opportunities for advancement (also borrowing from Perry, 2014). The three motivational factors remain interrelated and are particularly gendered in nature. The article concludes with a discussion of the potential of this data to expand the PSM theoretical framework and its ways of measurement. As such, the analysis in this article calls for PSM studies to encompass more than attitudinal statements and personal characteristics, which has been the key approach for the study of the concept in the Western context, and to include more contextual variables of culture and labor market conditions. This is a much needed step for the transferability of PSM theorization into a global context.

The article is organized as follows. The following section engages with the literature on PSM and discusses the theoretical framework as applied to the Middle East. This is followed by a discussion of the context of women’s employment in the region, which provides a background for the analysis of the interview data presented in the subsequent section. The article concludes with a discussion of the relevance of this data to the theorization on PSM, study limitations, and the study contribution to PSM research.

Conceptual Framework: Public Service Motivation, Society, and Gender

Employment sector preference has long drawn extensive research on the part of scholars across fields. Schneider’s (1987) early assertion that people are not randomly assigned to organizations and his elaboration of the attraction-selection-attrition cycle has been central to this line of research. Similarly, Kristof-Brown et al. (2005) highlight the extensive use of the person-environment interaction theoretical approach, particularly the person-organization fit concept (Chatman, 1989), in the management literature. In public administration, the concept of PSM has particularly gained recognition in relation to public sector preference. Perry and Wise (1990) provided the most-circulated formulation of what became an expansive line of research on PSM. They defined PSM as “an individual’s disposition to respond to motives grounded primarily or uniquely in public institutions and organizations” (p. 368). In a more recent iteration, Perry (1996) grounds PSM on rational, norm-based and affective analytical categories. A number of researchers have highlighted the affinity between PSM and the attractiveness of working in the public and nonprofit sectors (e.g., Clerkin & Coggburn, 2012) and invoked models of person-environment-fit in relation to PSM (e.g., Vandenabeele, 2008).

Interest in the PSM concept started slow, taking almost fifteen years for a good number of peer-reviewed articles to focus on it (Bozeman & Su, 2015). In retrospect, Perry (2014) identifies three waves of research on PSM. The first wave aimed at operationalizing and measuring the concept. Perry’s (1996) development of a six-dimension measurement scale stimulated a large body of similar research seeking to operationalize the concept (e.g., Coursey & Pandey, 2007). The second wave focused on antecedents and correlates of PSM, with the concept analyzed both as a dependent and an independent variable (e.g., Taylor, 2014). The third and on-going wave, argues Perry (2014), seeks to look at multiple incentives to PSM including both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Research expanded outside the United States, mainly to include West European countries and a few other OECD countries (Van der Wal, 2015).

“The very popularity” of PSM, write Bozeman and Su (2015, p. 700), contributed to problems of its conceptualization. Two key dimensions remain debatable and are particularly relevant to the analysis in this article. The first pertains to the locus of PSM and whether it has to be grounded in public institutions, as initially defined by Perry and Wise (1990), or should include service in the third sector or even the private sector when engaged in public service. The general thinking, supported by Bozeman and Su (2015) and by Perry (2014), seems to be more inclined to support the earlier conceptualization. Bozeman and Su (2015) note that if stripped of the public sector as its locus, it would become difficult to differentiate between PSM and service motivation studies, which pre-date the concept.

The second area of boundary differentiation in research on PSM pertains to the dialectic of altruistic and rational motives in PSM conceptualization. This refers to the blurring of boundaries between PSM and the motivation to work in the public sector, often called public sector motivation. Vandenabeele (2007, p. 547) explicitly pushes for the separation of PSM away from self-interest and benefit-related motivations to serve in the public sector. In doing so, he offers an alternate definition of PSM as “the belief, values and attitudes that go beyond self-interest . . .”. Similarly, Brewer et al. (2012, p. 1) succinctly describes PSM as “other oriented.” However, a sole focus on this altruistic aspect of PSM has been associated with more negative emotions in response to workplace conflict (Davis et al., 2018) and work stress (Giauque et al., 2013). Alternatively, Brewer et al. (2012) argue that PSM relates to a particular subset of public sector motivation, which also includes motivators such as salary, pension rights, and the type of tasks assigned. They argue, however, for the need to “untangle” PSM from other motivations to work in the public sector (Brewer et al., 2012).

The exclusion of intrinsic and extrinsic job factors pertaining to public sector motivation from PSM is contested by Perry (2014, pp. 40–41), highlighting the need for research that investigates “natural multi-incentive settings” that would allow for “a complete picture of the dynamics that influence behavior.” In this later reiteration of PSM conceptualization, Perry (2014) offers a typology of three common public sector incentives: total compensation; job security; and “pure” PSM. These typologies are particularly relevant to the data collected as part of this study. Perry (2014) offers an explanation to the sensitivity of this dialectic, noting that it stems from the paradigm shift from an earlier focus on rational choice theory that dominated the 1990s to a focus on PSM that sought to completely divorce itself from this earlier paradigm. Kim and Kim (2016) argue along the same line, warning of a potential social desirability bias in the data about PSM, particularly in countries with collectivist cultures (Japan and Korea in their study), which would be relevant to data from the Middle East.

Unlike the debate on the locus of PSM, the debate about the inclusion of utilitarian motivators to join the public service has not been conclusive. Research on the European side tended to explicitly emphasize the separation between PSM and extrinsic motivations pertaining to job characteristics. The approach adopted in this article concurs with Perry (2014) on the need to provide a holistic analysis of the dynamics that lead to the preference of public sector jobs, including, but not limited to, altruistic motives of serving one’s country or community. The PSM theoretical framework provides the closest affinity to understanding the decision to join the public sector.

These contestations aside, DeHart-Davis et al. (2006) have been critical of the male focus of the PSM literature. Perry and Wise’s three categories of motives (affective, rational, and normative), DeHart-Davis et al. (2006) argue, do not allow for an appreciation of the historic limitations of women’s physical and social boundaries and their relegation to the private sphere. Instead, DeHart-Davis et al. (2006) argue that PSM contains gender dimensions that should be acknowledged. Particularly relevant to the analysis in this article is their postulated hypothesis that women might be less likely to declare a commitment to public service due to their competing loyalties between their productive and reproductive roles. Their analysis, however, showed that there was no statistically significant gender difference on that, based on survey data of public managers in state health and human service agencies in the United States. They further argued that three of Perry’s identified categories of PSM—attraction to policy making, compassion, and commitment to public interest—have distinct gender dimensions. Similarly, Buelens and Van den Broeck (2007) highlight the gender dimension in appreciating the work-life balance public sector institutions offer. While DeHart-Davis et al. (2006) acknowledge the number of studies that looked at gender differences in PSM (e.g., Bright, 2005; Moynihan & Pandey, 2007; Perry, 1997), they rightfully argue that the gender dimension remains largely understudied in PSM.

The scholarship on PSM particularly highlights the central role of institutions of socialization. These institutions, argues Vandenabeele (2007), help individuals internalize notions of “appropriateness” of behavior, with particular focus on the values of serving the public. Riccucci (2017) describes these institutions as contextual or environmental factors that contribute to sex-differentiated values serving as antecedents to PSM. Perry (2000) argues that PSM is affected by the way individuals are socialized, emphasizing socio-historical institutions issues such as parental attitudes, religion, observational learning, role models, education, and professional training. Lebo et al. (1995) were some of the early researchers to note that the preference for public service hiring has become part of a national institutions of socialization.

The role of one’s position in the administration hierarchy has also been highlighted as a key differentiating factor in PSM (Vandenabeele et al., 2006). It has been observed that senior civil service are often geared towards working in the interests of general welfare (Vandenabeele et al., 2006). Some studies have also highlighted a positive correlation between being at a higher hierarchical level and having higher PSM (e.g., Bright, 2005). Ritz (2011) highlights attraction to public policy making as a subset of factors within PSM, noting that it reinforces an individual’s self-esteem by being able to influence public policy; having proximity to policy-making; or providing expert knowledge to improve the political process and policies.

In summary, the conceptual framework for this study takes the public sector as the locus of PSM (Bozeman & Su, 2015). The study also conceptualizes multiple incentives to PSM that include what Perry (2014) describes as “pure” public service motivation along with other extrinsic and rational motives to joining the public sector. The analysis also conceptualizes gender-specific factors, which are informed by the interview data and build on the gender specifity of PSM (DeHart-Davis et al., 2006). The conceptual framework is also informed by the role of institutions of socialization and notions of behavioral appropriateness as related to PSM as the ensuing analysis shows.

The following section discusses the context of women’s employment in Arab countries the Middle East, which helps shed light on the context of the interview data.

The Context of Women’s Employment in Arab Countries in the Middle East

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region registered the widest gap (61.1%) in the global gender gap index of 2020 (World Economic Forum, 2019). One of the key factors to this large gender gap relates to economic participation. The region has the lowest female labor force participation rate in the world, stopping short at 26%, compared to a global average of 51.8% (World Bank, 2011). These figures of low participation rates are also combined with high female unemployment rates, with up to one-fifth of women in MENA labor markets being unemployed in 2007, compared to 10% of men (World Bank, 2011). In Egypt, for example, the unemployment rate among young women is more than five times the rate among young men (38.1% vs. 6.8%) (Barsoum et al., 2014). Similarly, the female labor force participation rate in Saudi Arabia is 21.9%, and the unemployment rate among women reaches 32.5%, with the majority of the unemployed from young educated women (Saudi Ministry of Labor, 2019). Within this constrained labor market conditions, the public sector is a key employer of women, hiring a large share of employed women ranging from 50% to 25% among different countries in the region (ILOSTAT). ²

Data on women’s low economic participation do not correspond with the recent advances witnessed in terms of women’s access to education, and particularly higher education, in the region. Like their male counterparts, women’s access to higher education started low in the second part of the twentieth century. The gross enrollment rates in higher education remains at a threshold of 30-32% since 2000 in Egypt; and hovered around 20% in oil rich countries (World Bank, 2008). However, the ratio of women has consistently increased to the extent that in recent years the number of female students exceeds the number of male students in higher education institutions in all oil-rich countries, particularly in post-graduate education. The gender parity education index of the region as whole is tilted in favor of women, reaching 1.19 in 2017 (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2019). Government post-graduate fellowships are made available to both men and women in some of these countries.

Cultural and historical forces are intertwined with economic factors to hinder women’s economic participation in the region. Values of patriarchy, which privilege men and promote gender inequality and control over women, are key. Conservative interpretations of Islam have assigned women a lower status and have promoted ethos of women subordination (United National Development Programme, 2016). Ross (2013) argues that oil production has caused women to lag behind because it reduces their economic opportunities and thus limits their political influence. Comparative data from the World Value Survey confirms the prevalence of patriarchal views in the region. In comparison to other regions, the Arab region scores are far more conservative in responses to statements about whether “men should have access to jobs before women if jobs are scarce”; whether “a university education is more important for a man”; and whether “men make better political leaders” (United National Development Programme, 2016).

The double burden of women’s productive and reproductive roles is global and well-documented (e.g., Hochschild, 1989; World Economic Forum, 2019). However, cultural and historical forces are at play in defining women’s ability to join the labor market in the Arab region. Focusing on Egypt, Barsoum (2019) argues that women’s ability to join the labor market is defined by their family position and opportunities to reconcile family and work obligations. Women are expected to solely shoulder household responsibility and are readily blamed when any of these responsibilities are not met, even if they work outside the house (Barsoum, 2019). While numerous studies have looked at the division of household chores between husband and wife in the Western hemisphere and working women’s double day burdens (e.g., Hochschild, 1989), the relative novelty of women’s employment outside the house and the prevalence of patriarchal values accentuates these tensions in the Arab region (Barsoum, 2019).

An oversized public sector and a weak private sector have been identified as key markers of the labor markets in MENA countries and a reflection of the historical trajectory of their political economy (Assaad, 2014). The demand for public sector jobs has had its toll on the efficiency of the sector across the region. El Baradei (2011) shows that the public sector in Egypt resorts to parallel structures of temporary hires for donor-supported initiatives due to system inefficiency. Moreover, public sector wages have been identified as having a deleterious effect on national budgets in the region, constituting 8.5% of its GDP (OECD/CAWTAR, 2014, p. 163). Karshenas et al. (2014) describe employment in the public sector as “fairly generous” in both pecuniary and non-pecuniary terms. This is particularly the case in oil-rich Gulf countries. Private sector employment generally offers lower-quality jobs than the public sector, except for the upper echelon of the private sector. Historically, public sector employment has been central to women’s labor force participation in the modern sector. A key example is from Egypt. Women’s labor force participation increased in Egypt by 31% from 1961 and 1969, coinciding with the implementation of a guaranteed employment program in 1964 that provided favorable conditions for women (Hatem, 1994, p. 42).

Study Methodology

This study is based on qualitative interview data. Ospina (2011) highlights the value of bringing to the study of public administration multiple traditions of inquiry and philosophies of knowledge that inform research. Public administration has an often unrecognized, long history of qualitative research (Luton, 2010). The tradition of interpretative analysis in qualitative research can be traced back to Max Weber’s appreciation of the Verstehen, or the everyday lived experience of people (Weber, 1981). Specific to the study of PSM, Ritz (2011) highlights the need for qualitative research to allow for the exploration of the less studied aspects of this construct. The rigor of qualitative research relies on data triangulation from multiple informants and sources (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). Rubin and Baker (2019) specifically call for the need for case studies in public administration scholarship. A distinct characteristic of qualitative research is its inductive approach, where the researcher does not start with pre-set hypotheses but allows for a process of “learning” from data collection (Rossman & Rallis, 2003).

The data presented in this article is based on interviews with women from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. While pragmatic reasons facilitated this sampling choice, each country presents what can be described as a “critical case” in that they permit logical application to other cases (Miles and Huberman, 1994, p. 28). Egypt is a lower-middle-income country with a socialist legacy of guaranteed public sector hiring since the 1960s that has been stalled due to economic reasons, rendering the public sector an employer of choice among educated youth (Barsoum, 2016). Saudi Arabia is the largest oil exporter country in the Arab region, with a strong adherence to gender segregation rules and a relatively recent history of women’s labor force participation in the modern sector. The public sector is the key employer of women in Saudi Arabia (Saudi Ministry of Labor, 2019). The data from Kuwait provides a window of learning about PSM in other oil-rich Gulf countries. Kuwait has been historically described as a “super-affluent” society (Shehab, 1964), with most Kuwaiti working women being employed by the public sector (Rizzo, 2005). The three countries provide critical cases for analysis of women’s public sector employment in situations of wealth and scarcity; different levels of gender segregation; and different public sector hiring policies.

Qualitative research does not claim sample representation. Sampling is purposeful in qualitative research, focusing on specific cases that can clarify or deepen the understanding of the social phenomena being studied (Neuman, 2011). It benefits from a focus on the insider’s perspective to offer a contextualized understanding of a situation (Luton, 2010). Therefore, descriptive statistics do not apply to this data. Instead, qualitative research takes an interpretive approach, focusing on the meaning that people attach to their action.

Data was collected using two approaches on two separate sub-samples. In Egypt, in-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of twenty-nine women. Interviews focused on their work experience and issues of job aspirations and employment sector preferences as part of a larger study on gender and employment in Egypt. Two former cabinet members have been interviewed as part of this data collection process. For women from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, fifteen structured open-ended interviews were conducted (twelve from Saudi Arabia and three from Kuwait) using a mix of e-mail messages and telephone interviews for a sample of fifteen women. The qualitative data used in this article has been collected over the period from September 2014 to May 2018. Interviewed women were reached through personal contacts and with the help of two assistants in Egypt and one in Saudi Arabia. All interviewers were women, who spoke Arabic as a native language. All interviewed women had post-secondary education, were between the ages of 25 and 50 years, lived in urban areas, and were either working or had prior work experience. For those who worked, their occupations were either in administrative jobs or teaching. Only one interviewee from Saudi Arabia was a medical doctor. The analysis in this article presents interview data from women who expressed an interest to work in the public sector or were working in this sector during the time of the interview. Only two women from Saudi Arabia, of all interviewed women from the three countries, noted that they would not choose a public sector job. ³

For data analysis, reasons provided for the preference of public sector hiring were analyzed and coded using the method of theoretical triangulation, which is common in qualitative research (Denzin, 1978) and has been repeatedly used in feminist research (e.g., Pitre & Kushner, 2015). Emergent codes were systematically compared to theory, earlier literature, and different reports on the labor market in the region. Interview transcripts were fully reviewed, statement by statement, and were coded according to the emergent categories.

In the presentation of data, and following common ethical standards in qualitative research, pseudonyms were used and all identifying information of interviewees were withheld (see e.g., Marshall & Rossman, 2011). Respondents were informed of the anonymity of the research finding. The only two exceptions to this rule have been the two former cabinet members interviewed in Egypt, whose names were identified upon their written consent.

What Motivates Women to Join the Public Service in the MENA Region?

This section presents the themes that emerged as women reflected on on incentives to join the public service. The incentives highlighted in interviews are organized into three sections. These are “pure” public motivation incentives, gender-specific incentives, and total compensation and job security incentives. While these remain interrelated, each of these notions is discussed separately for the conceptual clarity of data presentation.

Pushing the Research Agenda on Public Service Motivation: Discussion of Research Results and Conclusion

This article addresses two research gaps in the growing body of literature on PSM. First, it provides a gendered understanding of PSM that takes into account cultural norms and women’s historical physical and social boundaries (DeHart-Davis et al., 2006). Second, it provides an understanding of PSM in a non-western context, where research is particularly lacking (Van der Wal, 2015). In doing so, the article adds different nuances to the understanding of this concept in a global perspective. By linking the PSM theorization to the views expressed by interviewed women, this article discusses new directions for understanding PSM in non-western contexts. But before summarizing the results of the analysis and the contribution to the PSM theorization, the limitations of the study should be discussed. As a qualitative study, the objective of research is not the generalization of results. Although large in qualitative research standards, the sample of forty-four interviewed women (twenty-nine Egyptian women and fifteen women from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) does not allow for the full representation of women in the Arab region. While caution has to be applied in the generalization of results, there is value in the qualitative data in shedding light on unexplored areas of research and under-studied groups.

Focusing on public institutions as the locus of PSM, the qualitative data presented in this article highlight three interrelated categories of motivational factors to join the public sector among educated women in the region. “Pure” public service motivation (Perry, 2014) is obvious as interviewed educated women discuss commitment to serve their countries and communities. This particularly builds on interview data from women from Gulf countries, where some of these women were the first generation to receive post-secondary and post-graduate education. Data supporting this notion also come from interviews with women in high ranking posts in the public sector in Egypt. A general observation about this data is that the motivation to serve the country predominately comes from interviewees from a privileged background, either by virtue of high pay (as in the case of interviewed women from oil-rich countries) or by virtue of job ranking (as in the case of women who worked in the Egyptian cabinet). This is a pattern similar to what has been identified in other PSM literature (e.g. Vandenabeele et al., 2006).

The second set of motivational factors identified in the data relates to gender-specific issues of work-life balance in the public sector due to its shorter workdays and the appropriateness of the workplace to gender norms. This latter issue relates to spatial segregation of women in the workplace, particularly as reported by those interviewed in more conservative settings such as Saudi Arabia. It also relates to the large size of public sector institutions compared to the private sector, which allows women reputational safety in contexts where gender segregation is not required as in Egypt (Barsoum, 2004). The third set of incentives focuses on extrinsic factors of job security, income, and opportunities for advancement, also borrowing from Perry (2014).

The three motivational factors remain interrelated and particularly gendered in nature. Gender is the key cross-cutting theme in this analysis that is not limited to what is discussed in terms of work-life-balance and gender propriety issues. A gendered understanding extends to the other two motivational aspects highlighted in the article. Among “pure” PSM, the sense of dedication among women who were the first generation to get an education in Arab Gulf countries reflects the gendered legacy of the region. Similarly, the impact of limitations on women’s physical and social boundaries and their relegation to the private sphere is clearly shown in issues of total compensation and job stability. While work-life balance challenges are global, nuances pertaining to workplace suitability are specific to Arab women. These nuances reflect the weight of cultural values and the patriarchal legacy. A key relevant notion to understanding this data is to look at institutions of socialization, which not only draw gender roles but also instill “appropriateness” of behavior and situations of “dignity” in relation to serving the public (Vandenabeele, 2007).

The debates on boundary differentiation in research on PSM and the inclusion of rational motives are central to the analysis of the qualitative data obtained as part of this study. Limiting the understanding of PSM to the altruistic motives (e.g., Rainey & Steinbauer, 1999; Vandenabeele, 2007) would mean that only one portion of this data would fit with PSM. This would relate to the data pertaining to “pure public service motivation.” Another alternative is to follow Perry’s (2014) argument of the different incentives to PSM that encompass altruistic service motivation and extrinsic factors of job security, income and opportunities for advancement. If we follow this latter approach, the qualitative data provided in this paper squarely fits within PSM theorization and would become a welcome addition to understand it in a less studied region. In fact, even as women talk about job benefits, they do not fail to mention the added social value of their work to the society and welfare of their nations as highlighted above.

Conceptually, the article makes the argument for PSM research to include both intrinsic and extrinsic job characteristics. Since the introduction of the concept, PSM has been measured based on self-reported attitudinal statements that build on or against Perry’s (1996) conceptualization. For the concept of PSM to have relevance to non-western contexts, the analysis in this article shows that PSM theorization has to take into account more than just the attitudinal statements. Methodologically, the validity of attitudinal statements is often curtailed by social desirability biases. This has been previously highlighted by Kim and Kim (2016) while also studying PSM in non-western contexts. This can explain why some studies found that PSM had no significant relationship with issues pertaining to job satisfaction or even turnover intentions of public employees (e.g. Bright, 2008; Davis et al., 2018; Giauque et al., 2013). Methodological hurdle aside, this article brings to the fore issues of the historical context and cultural values. These issues would include the societal value associated with public sector hiring, gender propriety issues, inter-generational factors pertaining to women’s access to higher education, and the situation of employment opportunities. Altruistic motives to serve the country in the public sector can be difficult to untangle from these other values that associated with public sector employment due to these societal preferences. Institutions of socialization pertaining to these factors provide a much-needed nuanced understanding of PSM in non-western contexts.

Methodologically, the PSM data provided in this article extends the concept from its current individualistic focus to include contextual and cultural issues. It is a form of PSM that is best understood in view of the situations of socio-cultural contexts, gender norms, and historical legacies. Further research is needed to understand how PSM operates given the specifity of this region as the data shown above illustrates. While qualitative data provides a springboard for exploring new areas, larger-scale studies allow for better generalizability of results. An administration of a larger scale study, adapting aspects of earlier iterations of PSM research, would be a great addition to knowledge about PSM in the MENA region. Similar to other contexts, there is need to understand PSM both as dependent and as independent variable as it has been studied in other contexts.