On Value Differences Experienced by Sector Switchers

Abstract

This article examines experienced differences in values between employees in the public and private sector. To elucidate them, the authors interviewed 30 employees of the public sector previously employed in the private sector and 30 employees of the private sector previously employed in the public sector, all of them in the Netherlands. The major conclusion is that the values of profitability, competitiveness, and customer orientation have a greater influence on business decisions; in public organizations, values such as legitimacy, lawfulness, accountability, and impartiality play a larger role. However, great differences exist among the organizations within each sector.

Business and Government Ethics in the “New” and “Old” EU: An Empirical Account of Public–Private Value Congruence in Slovenia and the Netherlands

“…There are a few recent empirical studies worth highlighting here, including those by van der Wal et al (2008), van der Wal and Huberts (2008), van der Wal (2011), and de Graaf and van der Val (2008. The former two quantitative studies reached the conclusion that value paradigms of managers in government and business are ''internally consistent and relatively traditional '' (van der Wal and Huberts, 2008, p. 279).…”

Public Service Values: A New Approach to the Study of Motivation in the Public Sphere

“…Some argued that those individuals choosing careers in public service had fundamentally different motivating values from those choosing other career paths (Perry and Wise ; Houston , ; Lyons et al . ; Buelens and Van den Broeck ; van der Wal and Huberts ; de Graaf and van der Wal ). Other authors have been more prescriptive, arguing that different values should guide public servants from those guiding private sector employees (Heintzman ).…”

The Loyalties of Top Public Administrators

“…An ''administrative role'' has been defined by Selden, Brewer, and Brudney (1999, 175) as ''a cohesive set of job-related values and attitudes that provides the public administrator a stable set of expectations about his or her responsibilities.'' Values play an important part in this definition, proving that loyalty concept and conflicts are also closely connected to the value concept (de Graaf and van der Wal 2008). A study of public administrators' loyalty conflicts is therefore closely tied to the (mostly normative) public administration literature on values, moral conflicts, and ethical dilemmas (e.g., Bowman and Williams 1997;Cooper 1994;Frederickson 1993).…”