The pay structure reform of Macau civil service: the civil servants' perspective

With increasing demands and expectations from the public and civil servants, the Macau government introduced a reform of the civil service pay system’s structure in 2008. Among others, a major aim of this reform is to increase the civil servants’ job satisfaction, morale, and stability (Florinda Chan, cited in Journal Va Kio, 25 June 2008). The reform has increased the designations and increments of the pay structure.
However, the implementation of the reform has not happened without complaints from the civil servants. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to have a better understanding of the job satisfaction of civil servants and the extent to what they think that the civil service pay system contributes to that.
The research adopted a qualitative research design based on interviews. The views of fifteen civil servants were collected. The findings suggest that civil servants are moderately satisfied with their jobs, motivated mostly by extrinsic factors (pay), have little participation in decision making processes, and feel that work processes are very hierarchical.