Sector differences in employees' values: A cross-country investigation of Schwartz's Basic Human Values theory

Values are often argued to have important influence on attitudes and behaviors in organizations, which for instance is the argument in the Person-Environment Fit theory – where one of the arguments is that people... [ view full abstract ]

Values are often argued to have important influence on attitudes and behaviors in organizations, which for instance is the argument in the Person-Environment Fit theory – where one of the arguments is that people select/de-select organizations based on value fit. While there is large literature on sector differences in regard to PSM and work values, the literature sector differences in regard to more general value differences is scarce. Our interest is Schwartz’s Basic Human Values theory, which is nearly neglected in the public administration literature even though it has been argued to be a comprehensive and sound framework for mapping both individual and organizational values. Despite its theoretical and empirical grounding, we know very little on sector differences in employees’ Basic Human Values. Brachem and Tepe (2015) conducted some initial work using a 2005/2006 sample from the World Values Survey, yet their study did not sufficiently account for the hierarchical data structure, and relied on a small sample from five countries only, it is therefore important to extend this research question in a more elaborate manner. We are focusing on three Basic Human Values where we expect to find sector differences and propose based on former literature three main hypotheses:

H1: Public employees are more likely to have stronger Self-Transcendence(Benevolence and Universalism) values than employees in private organizations.
H2: Public employees are more likely to have stronger Conservation(Tradition, Conformity and Security) values than employees in private organizations.
H3: Public employees are more likely to have weaker Openness to Change(Self-Direction and Stimulation) values than employees in private organizations.

Here we use data from European Social Survey - consisting of data from 28 European countries, which is close to a representative sample at an overall level. The data holds responses to the PVQ, which is a 21-items measuring the different values in Schwartz framework. In addition, the data holds several important variables such as demographics, sector of employment, and occupational categories. Moreover we have multiple rounds of survey (2010, 2012, 2014) – giving opportunities to see whether results possess intertemporal stability. To increase the reliability of the Schwartz values we used confirmatory factor analysis which showed acceptable levels of fit statistics for both the lower-order and higher-order value dimensions of Basic Human Values. We run a series of logistic regressions that includes fixed effects for between-country variance and an elaborate set of controls such as education, establishment size, gender, socio-demographics and especially occupation. We find clear sector-differences for two of our hypothesized values that are stable across countries and sampling periods. Public employment is associated with stronger Self-Transcendence and Conservation values, while results are mixed for Openness to Change values. Our findings of very general and robust sector differences in Basic Human Values emphasize the importance for future research to investigate the impact these differences have on people's sector choices, attitudes and behaviors in organizations. Moreover, we discuss our findings in relatation to former PSM findings and how future studies could benefit from understand the relationship between Basic Human Values and PSM.