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More than Public Service: A Field Experiment on Job Advertisements and Diversity in the Police
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There is a human capital crisis looming in the public sector as fewer and fewer people show interest in government jobs. At the same time, many public sector organizations struggle with increasing the diversity of their workforce. Although many institutional forces contribute to the challenge, part of the solution is in how government recruits. This study presents the results of a field experiment aimed at attracting more and different people to apply to a police force by varying job advertisements in a postcard. The results suggest that focusing on public service motivation (PSM) messages is ineffective at attracting candidates that would not have applied anyway. Rather, messages that focus on the personal benefits of applying to the job-either emphasizing the challenge of the job or the career benefits-are three times as effective at getting individuals to apply as the control, without an observable loss in applicant quality. These messages are particularly effective for people of color and women, thereby supporting a key policy goal of the police to increase diversity of applicants.
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... Even in markets with close to full employment, job options for some specific groups like young people, women, or ethnic minorities are less secure (Linos 2018). Job security refers to a concern about involuntary job loss and is considered a classic work stressor having negative consequences on employees' job attitudes and health (Sverke et al. 2002). ...
... Different individuals create different job sets and they prioritize different attributes from a job or organization (Linos 2018). PSM pushes individuals to a specific job set. ...
... Even though the importance of public values to explain why high PSM individuals are attracted to specific jobs is theoretically solid, previous research reported mixed findings (Asseburg et al. 2018;Linos, 2018;Weske et al. 2020;Vandenabeele and Jager 2020;Ritz et al. 2022). According to Ripoll and Ritz (2021) the lack of a unique conclusion indicates that further research needs to account for 'the multidimensionality of recruitment strategies and job-choices' (240). ...
What makes public service jobs attractive to citizens? We address this question by studying several attributes simultaneously, categorizing the signals sent by each attribute as instrumental or symbolic, and clarifying the role of PSM. Using a conjoint experiment on a sample of citizens in Catalonia (Spain), the results show that citizens prefer stable, well-paid and public sector jobs in organizations pursuing public values. The influence of public values, a symbolic attribute, strengthens as PSM increases, but citizens with high PSM are equally responsive to the appeal of other attributes. The discussion addresses the findings and provides directions for future research.
... Due to the reputation of behavior in Behavioral Public Administration, an additional significant attention is whether a research assesses the behavior or an alternate for behavior. Since with much of our investigation on leadership and inspiration, majority of the Behavioral Public Administration research papers approaches, insights, decision making and behavioral intents with a small number of investigations that truly measure behavior (Hess et al., 2016, [8]; Grohs et al, 2016 [7]; Linos, 2018 [10]) frequently deprived of sufficiently distinguishing vital weaknesses of benefiting such alternatives for behavior. Although behavioral intents are stronger analysts of behavior than attitudes or risk assessments, commonly objectives only point out fewer than a third of the difference in personal behavior (Webb and Sheeran, 2006, [24]; Rubenstein et al, 2018, [20]) and features that foresee behavioral purpose regularly do not expect real behavior (Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran, 2005, [12]). ...
... First, the positive stereotypes we find can be strategically leveraged to attract and retain talent in the public sector. For example, Linos (2018) found that advertisements that emphasize the personal or career benefits of joining the police force are three times more effective than neutral advertisements at getting qualified individuals to apply. More importantly, these messages are particularly effective for people of colour and women and can therefore support policy goals in different countries to increase diversity within the public sector workforce. ...
We present an inductive, citizen-driven approach to identify stereotypes of public sector workers across the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, and South Korea (Study 1: n=918; Study 2: n=3,042). Contrary to common negative portrayals, we identify two positive stereotypes across countries — having job security and serving society; and one neutral/negative stereotype — going home on time. Notably, Americans and Canadians have a more favorable view of public sector workers than the Dutch and South Koreans. This study opens avenues for exploring positive public sector stereotypes and the impact of context on these perceptions.
... Public employers increasingly compete with private employers for labor, particularly in societies with shrinking workforces (Bright & Graham, 2015;Fowler & Birdsall, 2020;Linos, 2018). To address this challenge, consolidated knowledge about the levels and drivers of employer attractiveness across sectors is urgently needed, but previous scholarship has been inconclusive about both. ...
Employees’ attraction to public or private employers is an issue of enduring practical concern and scholarly debate, with inconclusive evidence of both the levels and the drivers of employer attractiveness. This study builds on online reviews of more than 5,000 U.S.-based organizations by more than 200,000 current and former employees, using their recommendations as a behavioral and consequential measure of employer attractiveness. Results of a relative weight analysis show that public employees place less importance on altruistic and intrinsic attributes compared to their counterparts in the private sector when they recommend or do not recommend their employers, but more importance on social attributes; while no sector differences emerge for extrinsic and prestige attributes. These patterns remain stable when we focus on an industry with little occupational variation across the sectors. As some of these results contradict previous scholarship, they suggest that employer attractiveness at the post-entry stages of the human resource cycle, when preferences may change as a consequence of employee expectations and experience, is a puzzle that deserves more scholarly and practical attention.
... The heterogeneity of choice architecture effects has broader relevance than in the market for data (Mrkva et al. 2021). Whenever there are distributional concerns, such as in government programs (Linos 2018, Misra 2023 or marketing campaigns (Dubé & Misra 2023), the heterogeneous effects of choice architecture and how it relates to the heterogeneity of baseline propensities will matter: A well-chosen choice architecture can help balance reach and distributional goals. ...
We study how choice architecture that companies deploy during data collection influences consumers' privacy valuations. Further, we explore how this influence affects the quality of data collected, including both volume and representativeness. To this end, we run a large-scale choice experiment to elicit consumers' valuation for their Facebook data while randomizing two common choice frames: default and price anchor. An opt-out default decreases valuations by 14-22% compared to opt-in, while a \$0-50 price anchor decreases valuations by 37-53% compared to a \$50-100 anchor. Moreover, in some consumer segments, the susceptibility to frame influence negatively correlates with consumers' average valuation. We find that conventional frame optimization practices that maximize the volume of data collected can have opposite effects on its representativeness. A bias-exacerbating effect emerges when consumers' privacy valuations and frame effects are negatively correlated. On the other hand, a volume-maximizing frame may also mitigate the bias by getting a high percentage of consumers into the sample data, thereby improving its coverage. We demonstrate the magnitude of the volume-bias trade-off in our data and argue that it should be a decision-making factor in choice architecture design.
... Yet from a representative bureaucracy perspective, these employees play a key role for the representation of marginalized groups in society (Bishu and Kennedy 2020). Given that employees of minority-and marginalized groups are already more difficult to attract to government jobs (Linos 2018), stereotype threat effects for these employees deserve our full attention in future research. ...
Public employees are stereotyped as lazy, inefficient, and slow. When made aware of such stereotypes, they may experience stereotype threat that impairs their task-performance. Across two pre-registered, large-scale between-subjects experiments (n1 = 1,543; n2 = 1,147), we found that performance in terms of task correctness, processing time, and effort was unaffected by information of negative public employee stereotypes. Our results do not indicate stereotype threat effects for public employees in terms of task-performance. This finding offers valuable theoretical and practical implications for the understanding of public sector stereotypes and public sector reputation.
Routine, manual, or blue-collar workers play a substantial role in delivering public services, especially at the local level. Despite their prevalence, scholars know little about the specifics of managing these human resources. This contribution challenges common stereotypes about blue-collar workers and argue a truly inclusive knowledge base on public- sector human resource management (HRM) must include these workers. Building upon the job characteristics model and the Ability–Motivation–Opportunity (AMO) model of HRM that links ability-, motivation-, and opportunity- HRM practices to job performance, a research agenda is put forward aiming to better understand blue-collar workers in government. Researchers are challenged to study blue-collar workers in government to truly construct both inclusive workplaces and an inclusive knowledge base in public personnel or public HRM research.
Law enforcement agencies across the country are struggling to recruit qualified candidates and this problem is pronounced when recruiting demographically diverse officers. Women demonstrate competencies important for effective policing: restoring trust in police, obtaining high case clearance rates, and using less force. The goal of this study was to understand how agencies use online recruiting materials to recruit women officers. We assessed the frequency of text, images, and videos depicting women and racially and ethnically diverse individuals, and content related to hiring and the job itself. We conducted thematic analysis to understand how policing, the agency, and diversity were portrayed. Characteristics known to discourage women applicants were highlighted prominently in materials. Agencies did not provide consistent messaging about diversity, resources for women, or support for work–life balance. We found differences between agencies with higher and lower percentages of women, but they were inconsistent and often in unexpected directions.
Following the events of the summer of 2020, public and private sector organizations have engaged in a variety of actions related to promoting, valuing, and celebrating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Perhaps due to their role as direct providers of public safety, local governments are along the front lines of DEI efforts and values. Using a novel dataset of International City/County Management Association job advertisements from July 1, 2020–November 1, 2020, this article examines why some local hiring authorities utilize DEI signaling language in their job advertisements while others do not. Results indicate that both external and internal characteristics are associated with diversity value signaling in local government administrations.
This study explores the predictors of government career preferences using a higher education socialization framework. Existing research suggests that students’ interest in government careers declines over the course of training in public administration graduate programs. This study investigates the extent to which characteristics of degree program, individual background, professional community, and personal community could explain this downward trend. One hundred public affairs master’s degree programs were randomly selected for involvement in this study. From the programs invited, 26 programs agreed to participate, and 552 master’s degree– seeking students responded to a survey. While the findings confirmed that career interest in government is related to a number of factors, such as gender, work experience, interaction with professionals, and involvement in a professional association, these findings did not fully explain the declining interest among students in graduate programs in public administration. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Although there has been considerable enthusiasm for public service motivation (PSM) research in recent years, two of PSM's fundamental assumptions have been relatively untested: its impacts on job choice and on job performance. Using panel data from two different studies, we offer stronger observational tests of these core assumptions. The findings, however, provide mixed evidence for these original assumptions. When testing PSM's effect on employment choice, we find that PSM measured during a law student's first year predicts the sector in which they are employed after graduation three years later. In a separate study investigating PSM's effect on performance, we find that government employee PSM does not predict employee absenteeism or supervisor assessments of their in-role and extra-role performance. Our findings support recent calls for a more nuanced theory and analyses of PSM to help better understand its implications for recruiting, retaining and motivating the workforce used to provide public goods and services.
Drawing on the theory of representative bureaucracy, specifically the theory of symbolic representation, we examine whether
or not gender representativeness in a police department’s domestic violence unit influences how citizens judge the agency’s
performance, trustworthiness, and fairness. To examine this question, we use an online survey experiment in which we vary
the representation of female police officers in a hypothetical domestic violence unit as well as the agency’s performance.
Results suggest that gender representation does indeed influence the perceived job performance, trustworthiness, and fairness
of the agency, as does the agency’s performance. Thus, this study suggests that the symbolic representativeness of the police
does causally influence how citizens view and judge a law enforcement agency, and thus in turn perhaps their willingness to
cooperate in the coproduction of public safety outcomes.
Many students start college intending to pursue a career in the biosciences, but too many abandon this goal because they struggle in introductory biology. Interventions have been developed to close achievement gaps for underrepresented minority students and women, but no prior research has attempted to close the gap for first-generation students, a population that accounts for nearly a 5th of college students. We report a values affirmation intervention conducted with 798 U.S. students (154 first-generation) in an introductory biology course for majors. For first-generation students, values affirmation significantly improved final course grades and retention in the 2nd course in the biology sequence, as well as overall grade point average for the semester. This brief intervention narrowed the achievement gap between first-generation and continuing-generation students for course grades by 50% and increased retention in a critical gateway course by 20%. Our results suggest that educators can expand the pipeline for first-generation students to continue studying in the biosciences with psychological interventions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)
Although a large volume of literature has documented the role of public service motivation (PSM) as altruistic work values, few studies directly examine PSM’s impact on job choice. Using longitudinal data, this article examines the factors that affect people’s career choices, specifically the extent to which individuals with different work values choose different sectors when considering job characteristics and person–job (P-J) fit. The analysis reveals that people are more likely to choose jobs in the private sector than jobs in the public or non-profit sector when they have opportunities to satisfy their altruistic work values through relational jobs. The findings speak to the importance of P-J fit when people choose their initial jobs. Contributions to existing literature and implications are discussed.
Self-determination theory maintains and has provided empirical support for the proposition that all human beings have fundamental psychological needs to be competent, autonomous, and related to others. Satisfaction of these basic needs facilitates people's autonomous motivation (i.e., acting with a sense of full endorsement and volition), whereas thwarting the needs promotes controlled motivation (i.e., feeling pressured to behave in particular ways) or being amotivated (i.e., lacking intentionality). Satisfying these basic needs and acting autonomously have been consistently shown to be associated with psychological health and effective performance. Social contexts within which people operate, however proximal (e.g., a family or workgroup) or distal (e.g., a cultural value or economic system), affect their need satisfaction and type of motivation, thus affecting their wellness and effectiveness. Social contexts also affect whether people's life goals or aspirations tend to be more intrinsic or more extrinsic, and that in turn affects important life outcomes.
Although most research focuses on person-organization fit to explain public service motivation (PSM)'s influence on job choice, this study investigates the independent effects of both person-organization fit and person-job fit using a policy capturing research design and a sample of first-year law students. Our findings suggest that PSM may play a more important role in person-job fit than person-organization fit. Consistent across three sectors of employment, individuals with stronger PSM were more likely to accept jobs that emphasize service to others - whether that be pro bono work (private sector), client interaction (public sector), or client representation (nonprofit sector). After controlling for characteristics that influence person-job fit, PSM neither increased the likelihood that individuals would accept a public sector job nor decreased the likelihood that they would accept a private sector job. Among other things, our findings suggest that sector may be an inaccurate proxy for values that are often taken for granted in PSM studies. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]
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Numerous studies have shown that public service motivation (PSM) is positively associated with public sector employment. However, the question of whether PSM influences or is influenced by employment decisions remains open since previous studies have mostly relied on cross-sectional samples with experienced employees. This article investigates the relationship between PSM and employment sector in pre- and postentry settings using data from a panel of Danish physiotherapy students surveyed before and after their first job in the public or private sector. The analyses show that PSM is relevant for neither attraction to the public sector nor actual sector of employment. This indicates that within a group of professionals, PSM is probably more associated with the nature of the public service work than the sector itself. Conversely, PSM is found to be severely hampered after job entry, which is interpreted as a shock effect. This effect is also moderated by sector, that is, public organizational membership prevents PSM from declining as much as in the private sector. This suggests that if PSM is associated with sector employment, then it is primarily a consequence of the sector affiliation, but in a more complex way than previously assumed.
Despite extensive public service motivation (PSM) research, our knowledge of PSM's influence on individuals’ sector employment preferences is limited. Few studies examine this relationship by suitable research designs, and the empirical findings are mixed. Using a sample of 718 Danish students of economics, political science, and law, this article tests (1) the relationship between PSM and attraction to public versus private sector employment and (2) the moderating effect on this relationship of students’ academic field of study. Overall, results underscore the multidimensionality of the PSM construct, as the PSM dimension of “public interest” is positively associated with attraction to public sector employment and negatively associated with attraction to private sector employment, while the PSM dimension of “compassion” is unrelated to both. Importantly, however, moderation analyses reveal notable correlation differences across students’ academic fields. Implications of these findings are discussed in the context of prior and future research.