Abstract

Many studies have investigated potential differences in employee attitudes and behaviors across sectors. However, empirical evidence in this regard remains largely inconclusive or even contradictory. Although theoretical explanations may exist, it cannot be ruled out that there are issues pertaining to methodological choices at play as well. The aim of this contribution is to explore whether two issues, one related to the justification of interpreting the public sector as a homogenous one and one to controlling for measurement invariance, influence conclusions of comparative research. Using a Dutch data set containing 1,998 respondents, we tested the impact of these two issues on four concepts that have gotten much attention in employee level comparative research, namely work satisfaction, organizational commitment, proactivity toward self-development, and public service motivation. Our findings demonstrate that differences exist within the public sector and that lack of measurement invariance affects results, which, in turn, affect conclusions regarding within- and between-sector comparisons. We therefore recommend that scholars recognize these issues before conducting comparative research.

摘要

许多研究调查了不同部门员工态度和行为的潜在差异。然而，这方面的经验证据在很大程度上仍然没有定论，甚至相互矛盾。尽管可能存在理论解释，但不能排除也存在与方法论选择有关的问题。这项贡献的目的是探讨两个问题，一个与将公共部门解释为同质部门的理由有关，一个与控制测量不变性有关，是否会影响比较研究的结论。我们使用包含 1,998 名受访者的荷兰数据集，测试了这两个问题对员工层面比较研究中备受关注的四个概念的影响，即工作满意度、组织承诺、自我发展的主动性和公共服务的动力。我们的研究结果表明，公共部门内部存在差异，缺乏测量不变性会影响结果，进而影响有关部门内和部门间比较的结论。因此，我们建议学者在进行比较研究之前先认识到这些问题。