Working for a Good Cause

Robert Dur and Robin Zoutenbier ()
Additional contact information
Robin Zoutenbier: Ministry of Finance, The Netherlands

No 7058, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: A rich literature in public administration has shown that public sector employees have stronger altruistic motivations than private sector employees. Recent economic theories stress the importance of mission preferences, and predict that altruistic people sort into the public sector when they subscribe to its mission. This paper uses data from a representative survey among more than 30,000 employees from 50 countries to test this prediction. We find strong evidence for a mutually reinforcing role of altruism and mission alignment in sorting to the public sector, particularly among highly educated workers and among workers in less-developed countries.

Keywords: World Values Survey; sorting; public service motivation; altruism; mission preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H1 J45 M5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2012-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: Public Administration Review, 2014, 74(2), 144-155

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7058.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Working for a Good Cause (2013)
Working Paper: Working for a Good Cause (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7058

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().