Asking for motivation from those without security: The contradiction between new public management and motivation theory among thai local government personnel

Abstract

Thai scholarship on the morale and motivation of local government personnel typically proceeds in two separate movements: it reviews classical motivation theory, then reviews New Public Management, and concludes that the two should be combined. This academic article argues that when the two bodies of thought are read against each other rather than side by side, they are found to conflict on a specific and consequential point. Every motivation theory conventionally cited in this literature treats security as a precondition rather than a motivator: Maslow places safety in the second tier, Herzberg classifies job security among hygiene factors whose absence produces dissatisfaction that motivators cannot offset, and Alderfer groups it under existence needs. New Public Management, by contrast, explicitly de-emphasises employment security in favour of performance-contingent and fixed-term employment. In Thai local administrative organizations this tension is structural rather than rhetorical, because Section 35 of the Local Personnel Administration Act B.E. 2542 caps personnel expenditure at forty percent of the annual budget and thereby pushes smaller organizations to staff themselves with fixed-term contract employees. The prevailing policy prescription, which calls for leadership development, learning organizations and positive motivation, therefore applies motivators to what is diagnostically a hygiene problem. The article proposes the concept of a motivation ceiling and a diagnostic matrix that matches interventions to the binding constraint faced by each category of local personnel.