Quiet quitting among Indonesian civil servants from a public service motivation perspective: A social media discourse analysis and literature review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56587/bemi.v4i2.172Keywords:
quiet quitting, civil servants, Public Service Motivation, netnography, bureaucratic reformAbstract
Background: Research on quiet quitting has been predominantly conducted in the private sector, while studies examining this phenomenon among Indonesian civil servants remain limited, particularly those employing the Public Service Motivation (PSM) perspective and qualitative approaches. This gap suggests that the unique structural characteristics of public bureaucracy may not be adequately explained by the generic frameworks developed from private-sector.
Purpose: This study aims to examine the phenomenon of quiet quitting among Indonesian civil servants through the lens of Public Service Motivation by synthesizing the existing literature and analyzing public discourse on social media.
Method: This study employed a qualitative descriptive-analytical approach. The primary data consisted of nineteen indexed scholarly references, while the secondary data comprised the top 798 comments purposively selected from 4,323 public comments on an Instagram post published by @birokrat.muda on 26 March 2026. After excluding non-substantive comments, 787 comments were analyzed using a netnographic approach and thematically mapped onto the four dimensions of Public Service Motivation.
Findings: The findings reveal that the themes receiving the highest public resonance were not necessarily the most frequently discussed. The theme of minimal discretionary effort received the highest average engagement (35.10 likes), followed by legal and administrative risks (26.48 likes) and perceived failures of the merit system (26.04 likes), all substantially exceeding the overall average of 12.29 likes. In contrast, the most frequent theme-avoidance of structural positions (19.6% of comments)-generated relatively low resonance (4.27 likes). Although work-life balance remained present as a generic antecedent commonly reported in private-sector literature, it was not the dominant concern in the Indonesian civil service discourse.
Implication: These findings show that quiet quitting among Indonesian civil servants is best understood as an erosion of the self-sacrifice and commitment to public interest dimensions of Public Service Motivation, reinforced by structural characteristics unique to the Indonesian bureaucratic system rather than merely reflecting the generic patterns identified in private-sector studies.
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