Public and Private Sector a Comparison. , Study Guides, Projects, Research of Introduction to Public Administration

Download Public and Private Sector a Comparison. and more Study Guides, Projects, Research Introduction to Public Administration in PDF only on Docsity! Public Administration Vol. 86, No. 2, 2008 (465–482) © 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9299.2008.00719.x WHAT ’ S VALUED MOST? SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES OF THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTOR ZEGER VAN DER WAL , GJALT DE GRAAF AND KARIN LASTHUIZEN In recent administrative and organizational literature much attention has been paid to values that guide organizational and managerial behaviour in the public and private domain. Comparative empirical research efforts, however, are sparse. This article reports the results of a comparative empirical survey of 382 managers from a variety of public and private sector organizations in The Netherlands. Contrary to much recent literature that presupposes the intermixing or convergence of value systems guiding governance in different kinds of organizations, the results of this study show two distinct and relatively classical value systems for government and business as well as a ‘ common core ’ of important organizational qualities. These are accountability, expertise, reliability, effi ciency and effectiveness, all of which are considered crucial in both public and private sector organizations. Additional analysis shows that value preferences are primarily attached to sector rather than to age, gender, working experience, or previous employment in the other sector. INTRODUCTION Many administrative scholars claim that government and business organizational values ‘ should ’ be different, but whether they really are different merits further empirical analy- sis. Despite the rapidly expanding number of studies on values in public and private settings in recent decades, efforts to empirically study the differences and similarities between both sectors ’ values have been rare; most research is monosectoral and mono- disciplinary in both theory and method. Although a lively debate has been initiated on the relationship between market and public values and the (un)desirability of value in- termixing, most contributions are ideological rather than descriptive. We contribute to this debate empirically by comparing value orientations in public and private sector organizations, drawing upon theories and concepts from both public and business administration. Realizing that research on ethics and values has a rich tradition in philosophy, sociology and political science (see, for example, Kluckhohn 1951; Rawls 1971; Rokeach 1973; Gaus 1990 ), the focus here is the recent administrative debate (public and private) on organiza- tional values. Within both domains, several research perspectives can be distinguished with regard to values in an organizational context. Business administration scholars (par- ticularly business ethicists) have studied organizational values in relation to organiza- tional culture and climate ( Schein 1992; Paine 1994, 2002 ), excellence and success ( Peters and Waterman 2005 ) and, more recently, corporate social responsibility and corporate social performance ( Agle and Caldwell 1999; Joyner and Payne 2002; Hemingway and Maclagan 2004 ), and workplace spirituality ( Jurkiewicz and Giacolone 2004 ). Within public administration, particularly administrative ethics, recent debates are dominated by the relationship between work values – ‘ pay, ’ ‘ job security ’ and ‘ stimulating Zeger van der Wal is Post-doctoral Researcher, Gjalt de Graaf is Assist ant Professor and Karin Lasthuizen is Senior Researcher in Integrity of Governance, Department of Public Administration and Organization Science, VU University Amsterdam. 466 ZEGER VAN DER WAL ET AL . Public Administration Vol. 86, No. 2, 2008 (465–482) © 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. work ’ – and public service motivation ( Karl and Sutton 1998; Lewis and Frank 2002; Frank and Lewis 2004; Lyons et al. 2006 ), and the (assumed) infl uence of business-like ap- proaches to government such as New Public Management ( Hood 1991 ), performance- oriented organizational management ( Pollitt and Bouckaert 2000 ) or management by measurement ( Noordegraaf and Abma 2003 ) on traditional public sector organizational values such as ‘ impartiality, ’ ‘ lawfulness ’ and ‘ neutrality ’ (see, for example, Frederickson 1997, 2005; Lane 1994; Eikenberry and Kluver 2004 ). The assumed infl uence of business-like approaches on public sector values is a recur- rent and contested issue among public administration scholars and practitioners. A number of authors fear a decline in public service values (for example, Frederickson 1997, 2005; Lane 1994 ), arguing that overemphasis on business administration values comes at the expense of the unique value set that is necessary to serve the public interest ( Maesschalck 2004 ). Some authors thus advocate a clear set of public service values (for example, Van Wart 1998; Beck Jørgensen 1999 ) and others have responded to this call (for example, Kernaghan 2000, 2003 ). Discussions on problematic aspects of value intermixing, deal almost exclusively with the concern that the blurring of sectoral lines implies an increased appeal to market values in the public sector. According to Schultz (2004 , p. 292) the reverse is also true: ‘ Although many would laud the move to encourage corporate social responsibility and ethical be- havior, the intermixing of public and private functions raises vexing ethical questions similar to those when governmental and nonprofi t entities intermix. The result may be that no clear set of ethical rules dominates ’ . This way of thinking harks back to Jane Jacob ’ s (1992, p. xii) advocacy for a clear distinction between the public sector ethos ( ‘ guardian moral syndrome ’ ) and the private sector ethos ( ‘ commercial moral syndrome ’ ): ‘ [B]ehavior that (randomly) picks and chooses precepts from both syndromes creates monstrous moral hybrids; you can ’ t mix up such contradictory moral syndromes without opening up moral abysses and producing all kinds of functional messes ’ . At fi rst glance, it seems evident that both corporate social responsibility (CSR) and new public management (NPM) developments would increase the likelihood of traditional public and private sector values intermixing or converging. Within the private sector, CSR emphasizes traditional public sector values such as sustainability, (social) responsi- bility, accountability and, specifi cally related to corporate integrity, ‘ empathy ’ , ‘ solidar- ity ’ , ‘ reliability ’ and ‘ fairness ’ ( Kaptein and Wempe 2002 , pp. 237 – 46). Within the public sector, NPM advocates traditional business values such as ‘ effi ciency ’ , ‘ effectiveness ’ , ‘ innovation ’ , ‘ profi t ’ , ‘ competence ’ and ‘ quality ’ (see Lane 1994; Tait 1997 ). The prescriptions of both CSR and NPM enlarge the relevance of comparative empirical research on values in public and private settings and give rise to some interesting ques- tions. Is it still possible (and relevant) to distinguish between two traditionally different value orientations? Will a comparison result in fragmented or even contradictory pic- tures? Or is one specifi c set of values predominant in each sector? We answer these ques- tions by comparing the central organizational values deemed most important by 231 top-level federal civil servants and 151 business executives of medium- and large-sized companies in The Netherlands In identical questionnaires, respondents were asked to rank the most important values from a mixed set of 20 public sector, private sector and common core organizational values that were derived through reviews of literature (see Van der Wal et al. 2006 ). Following this state-of-the-art literature review in public and private sector value research, we pay specifi c attention to the meaning and ontology of the main research WHAT ’ S VALUED MOST? 469 Public Administration Vol. 86, No. 2, 2008 (465–482) © 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. that part of the enculturation process of employees involves abandoning individual morals and values as the basis of ethical judgement and replacing them with an organi- zationally based collective ethic ( Jackall 1988 ). Many authors also argue that institutions have goals, values and knowledge that exist independent of their constituents, and which determine, in large part, the decisions and behaviour of people inside those institutions (see, for example, French 1984; Pruzan 2001; de Graaf 2005 ). In other words, organizations have their own dynamic (de Graaf 2003, 2005). Although such a perspective implies that an organizational culture is not a static construct, and is in part constructed and recoded by individuals entering the organization (see Schein 1992 ), the focus of this study con- cerns those values that dominate the present decision-making practices of the organiza- tion. To clarify, the important and related a priori question on the values and motivations of individuals related to a preference for employment in the public or private sector ( Karl and Sutton 1998; Lewis and Frank 2002; Frank and Lewis 2004; Lyons et al. 2006 ) is not addressed here. The internal dynamic within organizations render methodological individualism hard to defend. The former transcend individual behaviour and decisions. Although individ- ual subjects are included in this study, the unit of analysis will be ‘ organizational values ’ , the values that play a role in organizational decision making. In this context, executive managers are perceived to be spokespersons for their organizations and overseers of strategic decision-making processes. Set of values as a research tool Our research presented a mixed set of 20 values and their defi nitions to the respondents. The process by which the set of values used in this research were constructed has been described extensively in a previous study ( Van der Wal et al. 2006 ). Through an extensive literature review of both administrative and business ethics literature (recent books, jour- nals, codes of conduct and government documents), over 500 different values were deduced. These were subsequently clustered, integrated and weighed using 15 variables that determined the relevance and importance of the specifi c value. For instance, values that were explicitly characterized as organizational and very relevant to the specifi c sector were determined to be more important than values that were mentioned without an organizational or sectoral specifi cation. For both government and business, 13 organizational values were determined to be the most important. Five values were present in both sets, and the remaining 21 were again weighed, integrated and supplemented by empirical research results, so that a defi nitive set of 20 values, suitable for survey research, could be created ( Van der Wal et al. 2006 ). In short, the mixed set of values ( table 1 ) includes what some call ‘ moral values ’ – such as honesty – as well as what some call ‘ instrumental values ’ – such as effi ciency. Here, such an explicit distinction is not applied, subsequent to the argument that proclaiming ‘ effi ciency ’ as a leading organizational principle is as much a moral choice as it is an instrumental one. The value set is an attempt to create a feasible value survey research tool. The set con- sists of a balanced mix between characteristic public sector values ( ‘ impartiality ’ , ‘ lawful- ness ’ , ‘ social justice ’ ), private sector or business values ( ‘ innovativeness ’ , ‘ profi tability ’ , ‘ self-fulfi llment ’ ), values mentioned in both administrative and business ethics literature and research, and public and private sector codes of conduct ( ‘ accountability ’ , ‘ expertise ’ , ’ honesty ’ , ‘ (social) responsibility ’ and ‘ transparency ’ ). Clear defi nitions were attached to the 20 organizational values. These defi nitions were drawn from the literature in 470 ZEGER VAN DER WAL ET AL . Public Administration Vol. 86, No. 2, 2008 (465–482) © 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. accordance with our defi nition of the main construct, to reduce the effect of individual respondent perception and interpretation. This aspect is of particular importance in research on values – as has been argued in the section on central research concepts. De Vries (2002) , for instance, has shown convincingly that civil servants within different administrative cultures interpret a seemingly universal concept such as ‘ honesty ’ very differently. According to Schmidt and Posner 1986 , p. 448), ‘ [R]esponses to a questionnaire may not correspond exactly with how people behave; questionnaire responses are likely to be more positive and idealistic than behavioural responses which occur when managers feel under pressure, confronted with confl icting information and competing loyalties ’ . There is, however, a need for basic empirical data on public and private sector value differ- ences and a survey enables a broad picture of different organizations in both sectors to emerge. Because the objective is to study the perception of the importance of values, a self- completion survey seems the appropriate method. Some respondents remarked that fi lling in the questionnaire had been a clarifying values exercise for themselves and the organization. METHODOLOGY AND MEASURES Participants A 7-page self-completion mail survey was sent to 766 managers of government organiza- tions (response rate 30.16 per cent) and 497 managers of business organizations (response rate 30.44 per cent). This was felt to be a respectable response rate given the type of re- spondent. It is also comparable with earlier published mail surveys among top managers, albeit somewhat lower than most public sector response rates and considerably higher than most business response rates (see Posner and Schmidt 1984, 1993, 1996; Bowman and Williams 1997; Kim 2001; Goss 2003 ). The questionnaire was fi rst pre-tested among 16 public and private sector managers. The questionnaire was then distributed in TABLE 1 Mixed set of public, private and common core organizational values Organizational value set Accountability : act willingly to justify and explain actions to the relevant stakeholders Collegiality : act loyally and show solidarity towards colleagues Dedication : act with diligence, enthusiasm and perseverance Effectiveness : act to achieve the desired results Effi ciency : act to achieve results with minimal means Expertise : act with competence, skill and knowledge Honesty : act truthfully and comply with promises Impartiality : act without prejudice or bias toward specifi c group interests Incorruptibility : act without prejudice and bias toward private interests Innovativeness : act with initiative and creativity (to invent or introduce new policies or products) Lawfulness : act in accordance with existing laws and rules Obedience : act in compliance with the instructions and policies (of superiors and the organization) Profi tability : act to achieve gain (fi nancial or other) Reliability : act in a trustworthy and consistent way towards relevant stakeholders Responsiveness : act in accordance with the preferences of citizens and customers Self - fulfi llment : act to stimulate the (professional) development and well-being of employees Serviceability : act helpfully and offer quality and service towards citizens and customers Social justice : act out of commitment to a just society Sustainability : act out of commitment to nature and the environment Transparency : act openly, visibly and controllably WHAT ’ S VALUED MOST? 471 Public Administration Vol. 86, No. 2, 2008 (465–482) © 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. co- operation with the relevant professional associations: Senior Public Service (in Dutch: ABD) and the Dutch Centre of Executive and Non-executive Directors (in Dutch: NCD). ABD is the professional association of the top management group of the Dutch federal govern- ment; its database consists of almost 800 heads of directorates, departments and agencies that automatically become members when they reach a certain hierarchical and salary level. NCD is a professional association of 4,500 executives and non-executive board members of various small, medium and large companies (mostly fi nance consultancy, industry, law and infrastructure). Membership of NCD is voluntary. All ABD members were surveyed. From the NCD members, 500 managers were chosen at random: 400 managers of companies with at least 50 but less than 1,000 employees and 100 managers of companies with at least 1000 employees. This particular sampling of NCD members was to achieve the best comparability with the ABD members. ABD mem- bers ranged from bureau chiefs supervising a few dozen employees to department heads supervising up to 30,000 employees. Although organizational and departmental size sometimes varied widely, limiting the sample to top management helped to control for a number of other variables (education, income and general socioeconomic status), which may confound value differences (see Lyons et al. 2006 ). With regard to gender and age, the sample closely resembled the demographic of the population at large (see table 2 ). The fi nal sample consisted of 382 managers. Measures The survey contained questions on organizational values as well as on characteristics of the organization and management. Respondents were obliged to select the most impor- tant ‘ actual ’ values from the set: ‘ Please rank those fi ve values that are most important when decisions are made within the organization in order of importance ’ . In addition, respondents were asked to rank those fi ve values that ‘ should be ’ most important in order of importance, so that a certain degree of distinction between fact and norm could be ensured (see Lawton 1998 ). It was explicitly stated that the respondents were supposed TABLE 2 Respondent characteristics (population if available is given between brackets) Public sector (n=231) (%) Private sector (n=151) (%) Age: 26–35 0 [1] 1 [3] 36–45 20 [19] 17 [18] 46–55 55 [51] 41 [37] 56 and older 25 [29] 41 [31] Gender: M: 85 [85] 97 [94] F: 15 [15] 3 [6] Number of employees supervised: < 100 56 36 100–500 27 27 > 500 17 37 Working at present organization: < 1 year 6 4 1–5 years 31 24 5–10 years 9 17 > 10 years 54 55 Average number of employees entire organization: N/A 4259 Has worked in other sector: 33 29 474 ZEGER VAN DER WAL ET AL . Public Administration Vol. 86, No. 2, 2008 (465–482) © 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. There are, however, many similarities. Four of the most important values, ‘ accountability ’ , ‘ expertise ’ , ‘ reliability ’ and ‘ effectiveness ’ appear in both sectors. These four values can be considered to be the common core of shared organizational values. Nevertheless, ‘ ex- pertise ’ and, especially, ‘ accountability ’ are considered more important in the public sec- tor (share 1.5 and 1.8 respectively) than in the private sector (share 1.4 and 1.3 respectively). In addition, when it comes to less important or relatively unimportant values, the simi- larities by far exceed the differences: ‘ responsiveness ’ , ‘ obedience ’ , ‘ self-fulfi llment ’ , ‘ social justice ’ and ‘ sustainability ’ are ranked as relatively unimportant in both sectors. The effect of publicness and other confounding variables Table 4 shows the main results from the multivariate regression analysis for the actual values. This analysis enables us to fi nd out which values are correlated with the type of sector. Which values, in other words, belong more specifi cally to either the private or the public sector, and what is the infl uence of confounding variables such as gender and age of the respondent, years of employment, and previous working experience in the other sector. These variables may have been of infl uence, since previous studies have shown that younger civil servants place signifi cantly more importance on self-enhancement (career) work values than older civil servants ( Lyons et al. 2005 ), although work values are probably more infl uenced by individual preferences than organizational values. Other studies (for example, Rainey and Bozeman 2000 ) have pointed to the signifi cance of or- ganizational characteristics such as size, structure and culture as determinants of differ- ences rather than sector as such. As can be seen in table 4 , publicness correlates with six out of 20 values. This means that the distinction between public and private was important for the way the values were ranked: ‘ profi tability ’ , ‘ innovativeness ’ and ‘ honesty ’ are clear private sector values TABLE 4 Multiple regression analysis for the public (n=231) and private sector (n=151) Value R 2 Publicness Gender Age Years of employment Past employment Accountability .014 Expertise .000 Reliability .000 Effectiveness .000 Effi ciency .003 Profi tability .316 − .552 ** Innovativeness .054 − .233 ** Honesty .024 − .154 * Lawfulness .121 .384 ** Incorruptibility .050 .223 ** Impartiality .040 .200 ** Transparency .034 − .179 ** Dedication .005 Collegiality .001 Serviceability .004 Responsiveness .000 Sustainability .004 Obedience .001 Social justice .005 Self-fulfi llment .006 Note 1 : Only signifi cant beta ’ s are reported with * p < .01 , ** p < .001. Note 2: The importance of the values in bold is signifi cantly predicted by the publicness of the organization to which the respondent belongs. WHAT ’ S VALUED MOST? 475 Public Administration Vol. 86, No. 2, 2008 (465–482) © 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. and ‘ lawfulness ’ , ‘ impartiality ’ and ‘ incorruptibility ’ are clear public sector values. Public- ness proved not to be decisive for the other 14 values: factors that are outside the reach of this study may explain their rankings. With the exception of transparency, the con- founding variables showed no correlation with the values. This is in line with the orga- nizational focus of this study. After all, differences in gender, age, and so on, were not supposed to be of signifi cant infl uence since the managers who participated were asked not to display personal moral preferences but instead to portray their organization. From the additional analysis it can be concluded that ‘ innovativeness ’ and ‘ honesty ’ clearly are private sector values and that ‘ effi ciency ’ should be considered as a common core value. This result coincides beautifully with the results from the standardized share and enables us to create a caesura by 0.8, which separates the most important public and private sec- tor values from the less important ones. Reaffi rmed by the regression analysis, eight prominent values can now be distinguished for both sectors. Actual and ‘ should be ’ values Table 5 shows the top ten values that ‘ should be ’ most important for both sectors. Overall, the differences between the actual and the desired situation are small. Of the values that appear to be most important in the desired situation in the public sector, 10 out of 10 are identical to the actual situation. For the business sector, the score is 9 out of 10. A closer look at individual questionnaires, using a basic subtraction exercise between fact and norm, revealed that the extremely marginal differences between fact and norm were not due to ‘ survey respondent acquiescence ’ (see Fowler 2002 ), which would have been the case if a majority of the respondents had simply selected identical values in both parts of the questionnaire out of time constraints. The few differences are there, however, are interesting: according to public sector managers, ‘ effectiveness ’ should be much more important in decision-making situations (2nd in the ‘ should be ’ rankings and 6th in the actual situation). ‘ Impartiality ’ , a classical government value, should be of much more importance in the business sector (7th in the ‘ should be ’ rankings and 17th in the actual rankings!). This congruence between the actual and desired situation might imply that most managers consider the values that are deemed important in organizational decision making to be either ideal or self-evident. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS This study asked at the outset whether it was still possible and relevant to distinguish between two traditionally different value orientations. On the whole, the results of this TABLE 5 ‘ Should be ’ public and private sector values Public sector Private sector 1. Accountability 1. Profi tability 2. Effectiveness 2. Accountability 3. Incorruptibility 3. Expertise 4. Reliability 4. Reliability 5. Lawfulness 5. Effectiveness 6. Expertise 6. Honesty 7. Effi ciency 7. Impartiality 8. Transparency 8. Effi ciency 9. Impartiality 9. Innovativeness 10. Serviceability 10. Incorruptibility 476 ZEGER VAN DER WAL ET AL . Public Administration Vol. 86, No. 2, 2008 (465–482) © 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. study suggest that the answer is yes. However, looking closely at the results, the answer is also no. There are a few classical as well as unexpected differences, but there are also a number of strong similarities between the values of government and business. Public sector values The results of the study show a traditional and consistent value pattern for both the public and private sector. The most important actual public sector values – ‘ accountability ’ , ‘ lawfulness ’ , ‘ incorruptibility ’ , ‘ expertise ’ , ‘ reliability ’ , ‘ effectiveness ’ , ‘ impartiality ’ , and ‘ effi ciency ’ – are consistent with often mentioned crucial public sector values in the ad- ministrative ethics and business ethics literature (for example, Kaptein and Wempe 2002 , pp. 237 – 46; Kernaghan 2003 , p. 712), in Dutch public sector codes of conduct ( Ethicon 2003 ) and in earlier research among civil servants ( Van den Heuvel et al. 2002 ); ‘ integrity ’ , however, is often used as a specifi c value instead of the closely related ‘ incorruptibility ’ (see Van der Wal et al. 2006 ). The same goes for strongly related values such as ‘ transparency ’ ( ‘ openness ’ ) and ‘ reliability ’ ( ‘ trustworthiness ’ ). ‘ New ’ or ‘ emerging ’ values ( Kernaghan 2000, 2003 ), such as ‘ innovation ’ and ‘ profi tability ’ , traditionally associated with the private sector, are not present in the most important actual public sector organizational values. ‘ Effectiveness ’ , however, is among the most important values for government organiza- tions. As stated above, the conceptual status of this value in the literature is not clear (see Schmidt and Posner 1986; Kernaghan 2000, 2003 ). Interestingly, ‘ effectiveness ’ is mentioned as the second most important ‘ should be ’ value by public sector managers, a result that suggests that top level civil servants, at least in The Netherlands, perceive the public sector as less effective than it should be – and perhaps could be. It could also point to a certain degree of desirability for a more businesslike organizational structure and culture, in line with NPM infl uences. This claim is supported by the higher ranking of ‘ effi ciency ’ and ‘ transparency ’ in the ‘ should be ’ situation than in the actual situation. Overall, however, our results do not lend support to the claim that classical public service values are devaluated or degraded by the emergence of classical business sector values. It is also interesting to see what is valued least. ‘ Serviceability ’ and ‘ responsiveness ’ are ranked 10th (in both situations) and 15th (13th in the ‘ should be ’ situation) respec- tively. The fact that these values are not perceived to be among the most important after a decade of public management reforms in Western countries, in which outward- oriented, socially responsive, and citizen- and customer-friendly public management styles and structures have been promoted and institutionalized, is surprising. It might be that these values are not yet as important as the classical public sector traits of ‘ law- fulness ’ and ‘ expertise ’ , although the number one value, ‘ accountability ’ , is related to outwardly and responsive conduct. Another explanation is simply that public organiza- tions do not practice what they preach, or rather: do not preach what they practice. A fi nal note on this result is that it might have substantially differed if we had surveyed public servants who operate in direct customer contact, rather than managers as decision- making overseers. ‘ Self-fulfi llment ’ and ‘ profi tability ’ are ranked least important in the value set (see Van den Heuvel et al. 2002 ). This does not mean that they are not at all important or that deci- sions do not involve these values, but that they are seldom mentioned among the fi ve most important organizational values in governmental decision making. Also worth mentioning is the surprisingly relatively low rank of ‘ collegiality ’ (12th) and ‘ obedience ’ (17th). WHAT ’ S VALUED MOST? 479 Public Administration Vol. 86, No. 2, 2008 (465–482) © 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. The results of the study align with those of Posner and Schmidt (1996 , p. 277) who, while pointing to specifi c areas of agreement, state that the values of business and federal government executives are more different than alike. An interesting point of discussion raised by these authors is whether the differences and similarities are related mostly to organizational or individual differences, and to what extent ‘ people with certain values and perspectives join the public sector purposely (in order to actualize certain values) rather than the private sector ’ ( Posner and Schmidt 1996 , p. 287). A few interesting exceptions aside, it is clear that sector, specifi ed and operationalized as publicness, is a strong predictor and determinant of value preferences within organi- zational decision making. The question then is whether sector determines managerial and organizational value preferences, or if managers prefer a career in a certain sector in the fi rst place to achieve congruence between personal and organizational values (see Posner and Schmidt 1993 ). Such an individual focus goes beyond the reach of this study, but fu- ture research efforts could focus more on the relation between personal values and career deliberations, the debate on PSM, and organizational values and culture. Limitations of this study and directions for future research Elements of social desirability and perhaps coincidence are inherently related to the type of measurement used in this study. However, the same problems might arise when re- spondents are asked to rate values or select the most important of two or more values, for instance, in a dilemma scenario. Attributing specifi c values to specifi c conduct through participatory observation (see Beck Jørgensen 2006) or simulation has been tried relatively few times and has to be explored more systematically. The same goes for other qualitative instruments, such as case studies on the relation between policy decisions, organizational behaviour, codes of conduct and mission statements, and in-depth interviews, on what is truly valued most when important decisions are made, to improve our understanding of the nature and causes of sectoral differences and the context in which differences are constructed and experienced. By focusing more on context we might be able to obtain more insight into whether an increasingly popular value in both domains, such as ac- countability, relates to the output accountability, associated with annual business reports and shareholder meetings, or to process accountability, associated with the lawfulness of government acting, laws and procedures (see Jos and Tompkins 2004 ). In Koppel ’ s (2005) words: ‘ What are the different pathologies of a concept such as accountability? ’ Finally, it should also be noted that the validity and generalizability of the results of this study are limited to the public and private sector in The Netherlands. International comparative research is necessary to reveal whether differences and similarities exist be- tween, for instance, the public and private sectors in Western European or Westminster countries. 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