Does work effort for public versus private organizations differ?

At the core of public management are questions about whether and how public and private sector organizations differ from each other, and the effects of these differences (Bozeman 2004; Rainey et al. 1976). An important part of... [ view full abstract ]

At the core of public management are questions about whether and how public and private sector organizations differ from each other, and the effects of these differences (Bozeman 2004; Rainey et al. 1976). An important part of this interest are effects on those working for these organizations (Behn 1995; Brewer and Brewer 2011). Do workers perceive public and private organizations as different in characteristics, including their goals, than otherwise similar private organizations and what are the consequences? We take as a starting point the issue of whether ownership cues that convey information about the organizations’ ownership status affect people’s perception of organizations and the way they work for them. We focus on an area of caring services (nursing care for elderly) where workers might reasonably be expected to have an interest in producing the service (Francois 2007). We focus on an important part of this issue: Do people work harder in the sense of more conscientiously if they work for a publicly owned government organization rather than a private organization providing the same service?

There are good reasons for thinking information cues to be influential because they communicate something about the foundational motive of the organization. One of the crucial differentiations between public organizations and private firms is that private organizations distribute profits to shareholders (Weisbrod 1988). Thus, worker’s efforts may be perceived as expropriated. Public organizations, in contrast, are subject to a non-distribution constraint; they serve the public good. On this basis, we expect variation in peoples’ perceptions about public and private organizations to affect the extent to which they contribute to them. In this sense people will be more likely to work harder (i.e., more conscientiously) if they work for a public organization because they are working for the public good rather than private profit which will be reallocated to shareholders. The non-distribution constraint of public and private not-for-profit organizations leads workers to believe that their work will be used for the service because any surplus ought to be reallocated. In this sense, we argue that public versus private ownership status serves as an imperfect signal of the organization’s perceived pro-sociality.

To test our theoretical prediction that working for a public versus private organization will lead workers to put greater effort in work tasks, we designed an online field experiment which will be implemented in December 2017. Participants will be recruited to perform a realistic work accuracy task. The task involves transcribing hand written time sheets of a hypothetical nursing home and checking their accuracy. Participants will be randomly presented with one of two information cues which signal the ownership status of the nursing home for which they ought to perform the task. Systematic difference sin work accuracy between experimental conditions will be used as evidence of public private differences.