Welfare Regime Type and a Preference for Government Employment

The research question to be addressed in this project is: What explains the preference for employment in government/civil service versus private business? In particular, two specific questions are considered: (1) what work... [ view full abstract ]

The research question to be addressed in this project is: What explains the preference for employment in government/civil service versus private business? In particular, two specific questions are considered: (1) what work motives are correlated with a preference for public sector employment and are these effects consistent across nations? and (2) does the type of welfare regime in a country influence preferences?

The recruitment and retention of public employees is a crucial issue for personnel management throughout developed nations. The key to this issue is understanding what attracts individuals to the civil service. Effectively addressing these concerns requires understanding why individuals select government organizations as their employer of choice.

Several explanations can be found within the public administration research literature. Most notable among these is public service motivation. While public service motivation is not sector specific, public organizations likely provide a better fit for individuals with high public service motivation than do private sector organizations. By virtue of the public interest component of their missions and the services they deliver, public organizations are more likely to provide individuals the opportunity to satisfy public service motivational needs. Specifically, obligation-based intrinsic motives are the workplace equivalent of a commitment to the public interest, a dimension that is present in all descriptions of the public service motivation construct. For this reason, it is hypothesized that individuals who highly value obligation-based intrinsic work motives will be more likely to express a preference for employment in the public sector than will others. In addition, public employees are characterized as valuing job security and a healthy work-life balance. These and other individual-level correlates will be considered.

Beyond individual-level attitudes and attributes, it is likely that the national context in which an individual lives has an influence on general attitudes about desirable employers. Most notable among these is the nature of the welfare regime in a country. Drawing upon the welfare regime literature in comparative politics, hypotheses will be offered that predict how the typical level of preference for government employment differs across countries with different types of welfare regimes.

The data used in the analysis come from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 2005 that contains nationally representative surveys administered across many countries. Multilevel logistic regression analysis will be used to estimate models that include both individual-level and nation-level variables.