一般民眾的印象，總認為我國公務員缺乏同理心以及自我犧牲的精神，因而使得政府的服務效能低落，也因此，執政者認為只要公務員具有「聞聲救苦」的精神，政府效能問題便可迎刃而解。本研究以公共服務動機量表為工具，針對台南市政府文官進行調查後發現，我國文官似乎並不如民眾所認知的缺乏公共服務熱忱，相反地，多數文官具有高度的公共服務動機，並且，高公共服務動機帶來了較高的工作滿意度以及工作努力意願。然而，經本文整理國外文獻之後也發現，公共服務動機並非完全對組織帶來正面的效果，具高度公共服務動機的文官，在其個人目標與組織目標不相符的情況下，會產生包括「另類代理人問題」及「降低努力」等兩種方向的負面行為，惟經台南市政府文官的實證調查發現，經驗上並未產生文獻中所提及的兩種負面影響。

People normally have an impression on our public servants for lackingspirits of compassion and self-sacrifice. They consider it the reason of lowgovernmental service efficiency. Therefore, it is believed that if public servantspossess the spirit of compassion, the efficacy would easily improve. In thisarticle, by conducting an empirical survey on the Tainan City Governmentstaff, we find that, in fact, most of our subjects have high public servicemotivation (PSM).However, recent academic articles show that PSM not only brings positiveeffects, but also negative ones. The latter includes “alternative principle-agentproblem” and “low effort”. In the result, we could not verify that PSM leads tothe negative effects.