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Value Solidity in Government and Business

Results of an Empirical Study on Public and Private Sector Organizational Values

VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Leo Huberts

VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands

This article reports on a survey study of 382 managers from a variety of public and private sector organizations, on the values that guide sectoral decision making. Just as some important classical differences emerge, a number of similarities between the public and private sector appear to result in a set of common core organizational values. Furthermore, the data support neither increasing adoption of business values in public sector organizations nor flirtation with public values by business sector managers. This contradicts expectations in the literature on new public management and corporate social responsibility, suggesting public—private value intermixing. Value solidity seems the dominant feature in both sectors. Additional analysis shows that "publicness," the extent to which an organization belongs to the public or the private sector— rather than age, gender, years of service or a past in the other sector—strongly determines value preferences.

Key Words: administrative ethics • business ethics • organizational values • public management

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