Citizens Mistreatment Among Public Servants in Social Public Services

Abstract Public servants’ decisions that are inconsistent with citizens’ interests can lead to the mistreatment of public servants. The purpose of the research was to found out how the HRM practices in public organizations are related to the perception of fairness (procedural and distributive justice), and how the positive and negative moods of public servants are related to the citizens’ mistreatment. The research was made in local government, public schools, health centres and hospitals. A total of 1,729 respondents answered all the questions. Reliability as the questionnaire’s internal consistency was measured by Cronbach α for each multi-item scale. Four linear regression models were built. The results show that HRM is positively and statistically significantly associated with the perception of procedural justice. Furthermore, public servants’ negative affect is positively and statistically significantly associated with all four dimensions of citizen mistreatment (ambiguous citizen expectations, dealing with a disliked citizen, citizen verbal aggression, and disproportionate citizen expectations).