Where Does the Good Shepherd Go? Civic Virtue and Sorting into Public Sector Employment

Adam Ayaita, Filiz Gülal and Philip Yang
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Filiz Guelal ()

No 930, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: Several studies have analyzed different motives to work in the public versus private sector. Some studies focus on prosocial motivation, others focus on need for security (risk aversion). However, the study of prosocial motivation in the context of public sector employment has largely focused on altruism and neglected other forms of prosocial motivation, in particular civic virtue, the motive to contribute to the society. In addition, it is unclear whether the positive relationship between prosocial motivation and public sector employment is due to selection at the career start or socialization during the career. Our study extends the understanding of the motivational basis of public sector employment by considering civic virtue in addition to altruism and risk aversion and by investigating selection and socialization. Using a largely representative, longitudinal data set of employees in Germany including 63,101 observations of 13,673 different individuals, we find that civic virtue relates positively to public sector employment beyond altruism and risk aversion. We find evidence on selection and no evidence on socialization as an explanation for this result. Our study offers important insight into the motivational basis of public versus private sector employment and has implications for employers’ attempts to attract and retain suitable employees.

Keywords: Civic virtue; engagement; prosocial motivation; public sector employment; selection; socialization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H0 H1 J45 M5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 p.
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.566886.de/diw_sp0930.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Where Does the Good Shepherd Go? Civic Virtue and Sorting into Public Sector Employment (2019)
Journal Article: Where Does the Good Shepherd Go? Civic Virtue and Sorting into Public Sector Employment (2019)
Working Paper: Where Does the Good Shepherd Go? Civic Virtue and Sorting into Public Sector Employment (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp930

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