Public Value at Cross Points: A Comparative Study on Employer Attractiveness of Public, Private, and Nonprofit Organizations

Abstract

A commonly held assumption is that public service motivation (PSM) positively affects individuals’ attraction to government, but there are also private and nonprofit organizations that are beneficial to the common good. Therefore, the goal of this study is to shed light on an understudied topic in Public Administration, namely, how the public value of public, private, and nonprofit organizations affects their attractiveness to citizens and how PSM moderates this relationship. We find that employer attractiveness is strongly influenced by organizations’ public value regardless sectoral affiliation. This attribution of public value interacts with citizens’ PSM. For high-PSM individuals, the relationship between public value and attractiveness is stronger than for low-PSM individuals. Furthermore, high PSM exercises an asymmetric effect, punishing organizations with low public value more strongly in the private sector. These results highlight important implications for HR practitioners in all three sectors seeking to attract and retain highly motivated employees.

Understanding the Micro-Foundations of Administrative Corruption in the Public Sector: Findings from a Systematic Literature Review

“…Individuals with high moral standards and who hold strong motivations to serve others and the public interest are less likely to engage in corruption. These results fit well with the established scholarship of PSM as a strong predictor for ethical conduct and inhibitor for unethical behavior Ripoll and Ballart 2020;Ritz, Brewer, and Neumann 2016), and extent prior research on the generalizability of the negative relationship between PSM and unethical behavior by Gans-Morse et al ( 2021) and the continuous relevance of public value and public values and work ethos for administrative behavior and public sector attractiveness (Nabatchi 2018;Ritz, Weißmüller, and Meynhardt 2022;De Graaf 2007). With regards to the role of institutions, results suggest that anticorruption efforts based on the principles of accountability, monitoring, and transparency have to balance procedural rigidity and formalizationeffectively reducing the potential to abuse bureaucratic discretionand bureaucratic efficiency, which affect all members of the respective organization (Baltrunaite et al 2021;Alfano, Baraldi, and Cantabene 2019).…”

Understanding the micro‐foundations of administrative corruption in the public sector: Findings from a systematic literature review

“…Individuals with high moral standards and who hold strong motivations to serve others and the public interest are less likely to engage in corruption. These results fit well with the established scholarship of PSM as a strong predictor for ethical conduct and inhibitor of unethical behavior (Ripoll, 2019; Ripoll & Ballart, 2020; Ritz et al, 2016), and the extent prior research on the generalizability of the negative relationship between PSM and unethical behavior by Gans‐Morse et al (2021) and the continuous relevance of public value and public values and work ethos for administrative behavior and public sector attractiveness (De Graaf, 2007; Nabatchi, 2018; Ritz et al, 2022). With regards to the role of institutions, results suggest that anticorruption efforts based on the principles of accountability, monitoring, and transparency have to balance procedural rigidity and formalization—effectively reducing the potential to abuse bureaucratic discretion—and bureaucratic efficiency, which affects all members of the respective organization (Alfano et al, 2019; Baltrunaite et al, 2021).…”

Conceptual foundations of workforce homogeneity in the public sector. Insights from a systematic review on causes, consequences, and blind spots

“…PSM is often argued to play an important role in accelerating the processes described in the ASA model through person-organization fit -i.e. the compatibility between employees and the entire organization -particularly regarding the desired value congruence (Sekiguchi 2007;Ritz, Weißmüller, and Meynhardt 2022).…”