Crowding out public service motivation

Employing workers with Public Service Motivation (PSM) has been proposed as a means of improving performance in the public sector. There is, however, no conclusive evidence showing PSM among individuals. In this paper we attempt to firstly find evidence of PSM by investigating why people change jobs from the private to the public sector. Secondly we attempt to identify factors that crowd out PSM and thus hinder individuals with PSM from joining the public sector

Orientation training and job satisfaction: a sector and gender analysis

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), we investigate how various types of job training impact upon employees’ job satisfaction and its domains. We find that orientation training exerts a significant positive effect on newcomer male employees’ job satisfaction in both the private and public sectors, but it increases the job satisfaction of newcomer female employees only in the public sector. Other types of job training have only a weak effect on job satisfaction. We attribute the predominance of orientation training as a strong predictor of job satisfaction to its important function of facilitating the workplace socialization of new employees by reducing the uncertainty about aspects of the job that are not always easily contractible

The impact of life events on job satisfaction

Employing fixed effects regression techniques on longitudinal data, we investigate how life events affect employees' job satisfaction. Unlike previous work–life research, exploring mostly contemporaneous correlations, we look for evidence of adaptation in the years following major life events. We find evidence of adaptation following the first marriage event, but we find that the birth of the first child has a long-lasting impact on employees' job satisfaction. Our findings also suggest that there is a general boost in job satisfaction prior to first marriage and to a lesser extent prior to the birth of the first child, consistent with evidence of anticipation. Accordingly, our study provides some of the first evidence on the dynamic effect of non-work related factors on job satisfaction and it introduces a novel methodology and a new perspective for investigating the dynamic interaction between the work and life domains

Orientation Training and Job Satisfaction: A Sector and Gender Analysis

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), we investigate how various types of job training impact upon employees' job satisfaction and its domains. We find that orientation training exerts a significant positive effect on newcomer male employees' job satisfaction in both the private and public sectors, but it increases the job satisfaction of newcomer female employees only in the public sector. Other types of job training have only a weak effect on job satisfaction. We attribute the predominance of orientation training as a strong predictor of job satisfaction to its important function of facilitating the workplace socialization of new employees by reducing the uncertainty about aspects of the job that are not always easily contractible

The impact of life events on job satisfaction

Employing fixed effects regression techniques on longitudinal data, we investigate how life events affect employees' job satisfaction. Unlike previous work–life research, exploring mostly contemporaneous correlations, we look for evidence of adaptation in the years following major life events. We find evidence of adaptation following the first marriage event, but we find that the birth of the first child has a long-lasting impact on employees' job satisfaction. Our findings also suggest that there is a general boost in job satisfaction prior to first marriage and to a lesser extent prior to the birth of the first child, consistent with evidence of anticipation. Accordingly, our study provides some of the first evidence on the dynamic effect of non-work related factors on job satisfaction and it introduces a novel methodology and a new perspective for investigating the dynamic interaction between the work and life domains