Considerable research has asked whether public sector employees have different values and respond to different incen tives than private sector employees Recently, Jim Perry developed a scale designed to measure this construct, which he calls "public service motivation " We examine the relationship between public service motivation and federal employ ees' attitudes and behavior by examining responses of nearly 10, 000 federal employees to a recent survey Even though the survey only contained a subset of Perry's scale, we found significant relationships between public service motivation and federal employees' job satisfaction, performance, intention to remain with the government, and support for the government's reinvention efforts

Policy makers have long recognized the importance of achieving a representative federal bureaucracy, but the four most recent presidents have expressed divergent views about policies designed to achieve this goal. Meanwhile, there have been widespread perceptions among federal employees that the administrations' ideologies have had a direct impact on the opportunities of minorities, women, and white men for advancement. Using government-wide data from 1979 to 1996, this article examines whether such employment opportunities have varied in the manner suggested by these perceptions. We find little evidence of a correlation between the president's views on affirmative action and minority and female representation in the overall federal workforce. Moreover, the curtailment of promotion opportunities during the Reagan and Clinton administrations has affected all groups nearly equally. Potential presidential influence has been more notable in the representation of women and minorities in politically appointed and career senior executive jobs. We conclude that equal employment opportunity and affirmative action policies have remained basically intact during the 18-year period, but that recent court decisions, along with efforts to reduce the size of government, may slow progress toward achieving a representative bureaucracy.

One of the major substantive components of "big government conservatism" was a decided predisposition against public employee unions, toward privileging managerial discretion, and yet still maintaining equal opportunity in the workplace. However, could this predisposition be resolved in practice without harming federal employees' rights, benefits, and morale in the workplace? To address this question, this article examines whether the attitudes of federal employees toward variants of subjective discrimination in the workplace changed significantly during the George W. Bush presidency. We find that trends related to perceptions of retaliation and discrimination have improved in recent years. However, perceptions of retaliation and discrimination are found to exist among minority and female employees and managers in the federal workplace that require vigilance. These results suggest that big government conservatism's predisposition to pursue equal opportunity as opposed to affirmative action-while diminishing the power of public employee unions and enhancing managerial prerogatives-either succeeded on its own merits or that the earlier momentum could not be stopped.

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