Abstract. Public servants motivation is a controversial issue of public management that faces a number of challenges in Romania, especially since Romania went from a socialist society to a society that only adopted the democratic institutional form rather than its individualistic essence in terms of performance evaluation of public sector employees. The value of a public administrative system does not necessarily consist in the material and financial means at its disposal, but especially in its human potential, so it is understandable that special attention should be given to motivate public servants.

Thus, in this article we conducted a survey among civil servants in Romania with the objective to assess the employee motivation in central and local public administration. We also built a logit model to investigate the impact of the main factors affecting the chances of a Romanian public sector employee to become more motivated at work.

Keywords: public management; motivation; logit model; survey.