Altruism by Job Sector: Can Public Sector Employees Lead the Way in Rebuilding Social Capital?

Abstract

The face of public service continues to evolve as government copes with increasingly complex societal problems and changing means of service delivery. Public managers are now challenged to oversee programs that cut across sectors and organizational boundaries, and people carrying out the government’s work can be found across all sectors—government, nonprofit, and for-profit. Unlike those in previous generations, younger individuals see opportunities to engage in public service in nonprofit and for-profit organizations, which has undoubtedly affected the ability of government agencies to recruit and retain those with public service values. Have opportunities to engage in public service across sectors made differences between public, nonprofit, and for-profit organizations irrelevant? Are public and nonprofit employees any different from those in for-profit organizations, especially when it comes to public service values? Understanding why individuals engage in public service is arguably more important than ever as social capital and civic engagement decline. This article draws upon the “other-oriented” aspect of public service and builds upon the work of Brewer (Brewer, Gene A. 2003. Building social capital: Civic attitudes and behavior of public servants. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 13 (1):5–26.) and Houston (Houston, David J. 2006. “Walking the walk” of public service motivation: Public employees and charitable gifts of time, blood, and money. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 16 (1):67–86.; Houston, David J. 2008. Behavior in the public square. In Motivation in public management: The call of public service, eds. James L. Perry and Annie Hondeghem, 177–99. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press.) to examine the impact of sector on one area of prosocial behavior: volunteering. This article employs data from the September Volunteer Supplement of the 2011 Current Population Survey to examine how both formal and informal volunteering varies across sectors—public, nonprofit, and for-profit—as well as across levels of government—federal, state, and local. This study finds that government and nonprofit sector employees tend to volunteer more than their for-profit sector counterparts, but there are important nuances when taking work schedule, levels of government, and additional measures of volunteering into account.

The face of public service continues to evolve as government copes with increasingly complex societal problems and changing means of service delivery. Public managers are now challenged to manage programs that cut across sectors and organizational boundaries, and people carrying out the government’s work can be found across all sectors—government, nonprofit, and for-profit. Unlike those in previous generations, younger individuals see opportunities to engage in public service in nonprofit and for-profit organizations, which has undoubtedly affected the ability of government agencies to recruit and retain those with public service values. Have opportunities to engage in public service across sectors made differences between public, nonprofit, and for-profit organizations irrelevant? Are public and nonprofit employees any different from those in for-profit organizations, especially when it comes to public service values?

There has been much research on public and for-profit sector differences and the impacts these differences have on organizations (for reviews, see Boyne 2002; Perry and Rainey 1988; Rainey 2009; Rainey, Backoff, and Levine 1976; Rainey and Bozeman 2000). Besides sector differences, public service has been linked, more generally, to a way of life as Elmer B. Staats (1988) states: “In its broadest sense, ‘public service’ is a concept, an attitude, a sense of duty—yes, even a sense of public morality” (602). Similarly, Houston (2006) states, “They are ‘public servants’ who are committed to the public good and characterized by an ethic built on benevolence, a life in service to others, and a desire to affect the community”(68). In light of this unique public service ethic, are public and nonprofit sector employees more altruistic and more likely volunteer than for-profit employees? This is especially relevant with the blurring of the boundaries between sectors that raise issues for the recruitment and retention of public-service-oriented employees.

This article draws upon the “other-oriented” aspect of public service and builds upon the work of Brewer (2003) and Houston (2006, 2008) to examine how the altruism, through the act of volunteering, of public and nonprofit employees compares to those in the for-profit sector. Other-oriented values, commonly explored in psychology, emphasize social responsibility, cooperation, and concern for others (Korsgaard, Meglino, and Lester 1997), which reflect the special nature of public service and are often linked to volunteering (Penner 2002). This article contributes to the literature on public sector distinctiveness in several ways.

First, recognizing the growth of the nonprofit sector in recent years, this article examines differences across all three sectors rather than focusing solely on a binary distinction between public and for-profit organizations. Many think only of government when examining public service, but this omits the vital role of the nonprofit sector, especially in the United States. “These organizations. . .play an essential role and call for the same attributes of dedication, probity, imagination, loyalty, and commitment to the welfare of their fellow citizens as those who are employed by government” (Staats 1988, 602). Therefore, like Houston (2006, 2008) and in answer to calls to expand beyond the public/private divide such as by Feeney and Rainey (2009), this article will examine the impact of both government and nonprofit sector employment on one’s propensity to volunteer compared to for-profit sector employees.

Second, in order to take other organizational and environmental dimensions into account and determine if differences exist within the public sector, differences in volunteering across federal, state, and local government employees are explored. This article answers the call of scholars for an examination of differences across levels of government (e.g., Pandey and Stazyk 2008) by focusing on variances in volunteering across federal, state, and local government employees.

Finally, the article expands upon past studies and examines patterns of volunteering in greater detail by looking at formal and informal volunteering, volunteer hours, and patterns of volunteering for part-time and full-time employees separately in light of the impact of time on volunteering. The findings have implications for public and nonprofit managers alike, providing insights into employee motivations and behaviors that can assist in the recruitment and retention of “other-oriented” employees.

The article begins by providing an overview of the literature on prosocial behavior and volunteering. It continues with a description of the data in the analysis, the 2011 Volunteer Supplement of the Current Population Survey, which is a large, nationally representative data set. After a discussion of the methodology, the article reviews the results and provides implications for research and practice.

PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR BY JOB SECTOR

In light of the unique nature of public servants suggested in many definitions, researchers have begun to examine the prosocial behaviors of public sector employees outside of the workplace. Brewer (2003) uses data from the American National Election Study to examine the civic attitudes of public servants concerning social trust, altruism, equity, tolerance, and humanitarianism. Brewer (2003) finds that “public servants manifest more civic-minded norms and have stronger proclivity to engage in civic-minded behaviors” (19).

Houston (2006) builds upon Brewer’s work to examine the impact of sector employment on one’s propensity to volunteer, give charitable donations, and donate blood. Houston finds that government and nonprofit employees are more likely to volunteer than their private sector counterparts and that government employees have a higher probability of donating blood. However, the impact of sector employment on donating to charities was not significant. More recently, Houston (2008) continued this research to examine the impact of sector employment on civic participation and prosocial behaviors. He finds that government employees are more likely to belong to multiple groups/organizations, volunteer, and donate blood than private sector employees. Although Houston uses data from the General Social Survey in both studies, nonprofit sector employees were not found to have a statistically significant higher probability of engaging in prosocial or civic behaviors in his later study. Therefore, this study builds upon the work of Brewer (2003) and Houston (2006, 2008) to focus on a broader picture of one prosocial behavior—volunteering—across all three sectors and levels of government, using a large, nationally representative data set.

The Public Sector

The first issue in the “publicness puzzle” is defining what “public” is, which has been a central theme to much of the work on public sector distinctiveness. Three dimensions of publicness are prominent in the literature: ownership, funding, and control (Bozeman 1987). However, the most common definition relies on the ownership dimension (Bozeman and Bretschneider 1994; Perry and Rainey 1988; Rainey, Backoff and Levine 1976). In an examination of dimensions of publicness, Bozeman and Bretschneider (1994) find that “formal legal status (core type) has important independent effects that do not vanish with a more fully specified model” (218). Meier and O’Toole (2011) argue that “various definitions of publicness are indicators of an underlying concept—whether the program or activity has a public purpose” (i283). Therefore, the prominent defining factor of ownership is used in this study to differentiate between the employees in each of the three sectors.

Public sector employees are more likely to volunteer than their for-profit sector counterparts for several reasons. First, in addition to the general other-oriented nature of public service, public service motivation emphasizes “individual motives that are largely, but not exclusively, altruistic and are grounded in public institutions” (Perry and Hondeghem 2008, 6). Research on public service motivation has grown rapidly since Perry and Wise (1990) first coined the term, and although it is a complex framework that involves multiple aspects of motivation, altruism is a core component. Pandey, Wright, and Moynihan (2008) even note, “Rather than simply a theory of public employee motivation, PSM actually represents an individual’s predisposition to enact altruistic or prosocial behaviors regardless of setting” (91). Rainey and Steinbauer (1999) define public service motivation as “a general altruistic motivation to serve the interests of a community of people, a state, a nation, or humankind” (23). Similarly, Brewer and Selden (1998) state that “Public service involves the performing of meaningful government, community, and social service” (417). Based on the premise that public service motivation is prevalent in the public sector (Brewer and Selden 1998; Perry and Wise 1990), public sector employees may be more likely to express their altruistic motivation outside the workplace in their communities through the act of volunteering. Second, Rotolo, and Wilson (2006) suggest that public sector employees are more likely to volunteer out of self-interest since they tend to have more interest vested in the community. Third, the social environment of public sector workplaces may promote volunteering more than the for-profit sector. Based on the altruism of public service motivation and building upon the work of Brewer (2003) and Houston (2006, 2008), perhaps public sector employees are more likely to volunteer, both formally and informally, than their for-profit sector counterparts.

The Nonprofit Sector

The expanding nonprofit sector is often left out of the public/private debates in the public administration literature. This may be due to differences of opinion about whether nonprofit organizations are more like for-profit firms, due to their autonomy, or government, due to their lack of a profit orientation and focus on public service and values (Feeney and Rainey 2009). “Nonprofit and voluntary action expresses a complex and at times conflicting desire to defend the pursuit of private individual aspirations, while at the same time affirming the idea of a public sphere shaped by shared goals and values” (Frumpkin 2002, 1). However, nonprofit organizations are distinct and cannot be wholly classified as public or for-profit.

Salamon and Anheier (1996) describe the five key characteristics that nonprofits share: “formally constituted; organizationally separate from government; non-profit-seeking; self-government; and voluntary to some degree” (xvii). Boris (2006) explains, “Nonprofits in the United States are defined and regulated primarily under the federal tax code. They are self-governing organizations that do not distribute profits to those who control them and are exempt from federal income taxes by virtue of being organized for public purposes” (3). In this study, ownership is used to differentiate between government and private organizations, both for-profit and nonprofit, and the tax exemption is used to differentiate between nonprofit and for-profit organizations. However, the government, nonprofit, and for-profit sectors also vary in the value that they produce, where for-profit organizations focus on returns to shareholders and value to customers, government agencies focus on political mandates and serving the public, and nonprofit organizations focus on satisfying donors and achieving social purposes (Moore 2000). Therefore, the sector characteristics of ownership and the tax exemption are used to provide clear separations between the three sectors, but each sector also focuses on and produces certain values, which may motivate employees to join the sector and be reflected in the propensity of employees to volunteer.

Similar to public sector employees, nonprofit employees often choose to work in the nonprofit sector in order to serve others (Rotolo and Wilson 2006), but studies have also found that the motivations for working in a given sector vary greatly for nonprofit and government employees (Lee and Wilkins 2011). Light (2002) found that compared to public and for-profit sector employees, nonprofit sector employees were more likely to choose their current employment “to focus on helping the public, making a difference, doing something, and pride in the organization itself” (10). The donative labor theory is often used to explain the unique nature and motivations of nonprofit employees, where “nonprofit workers derive utility from the nature of the good produced and are thus willing to accept a lower (compensating) wage” (Leete 2001, 137). Based on donative labor theory and the desire to help others, perhaps nonprofit sector employees are even more likely to volunteer, both formally and informally, than government and for-profit employees. Overall, public and nonprofit employees seem to share a common public service ethic or other-oriented nature that may be reflected in their propensity to volunteer.

Researchers have begun to examine differences in volunteering across the three sectors. Houston found nonprofit employees were more likely to volunteer in his 2006 study but did not find a significant difference in his 2008 study, even though both used the General Social Survey. However, using the Current Population Survey, Rotolo and Wilson (2006) found that nonprofit sector employees are most likely to volunteer and with the most hours, followed by public sector and for-profit employees. In examining patterns of volunteering, Lee (2012) finds that nonprofit employees are more likely to volunteer in religious and social/community organizations, whereas public sector employees are more likely to volunteer in educational organizations. Based on the motivation for individuals to join the nonprofit sector and previous studies, nonprofit sector employees seem even more other-oriented than public sector employees and more likely to volunteer.

Levels of Government

Research on public sector distinctiveness typically examines the public sector as a whole or uses a sample of one level of government. Little attention has been paid to the nuances that may exist within the public sector across federal, state, and local government agencies, with the exception of a handful of studies that focused on relatively narrow issues. For example, Koontz (2007) found that state forest rangers had higher discretion, more workforce homogeneity, and a greater number of interactions with citizens than their federal counterparts. However, there has been some research on public trust by levels of government, which finds citizen trust is lowest at the federal government level, somewhat higher at the state level, and highest at the local government level (Cole and Kincaid 2000; Cooper, Knotts, and Brennan 2008; U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations 1992). Although the prosocial behavior of federal, state, and local government employees has yet to be examined, perhaps federal, state, and local government employees have varying levels of altruism that may be reflected in their propensity to volunteer. In light of research on public trust, perhaps local government employees will be more vested in their communities and more likely to volunteer. These results could therefore have important implications for our understanding of the distinctions between employees within the public sector. The hypotheses for the relationships between formal volunteering, formal volunteer hours, and informal volunteering for public sector, nonprofit sector, and levels of government are summarized in table 1.

DIMENSIONS OF VOLUNTEERING

Formal Volunteering

The vast majority of research on volunteering focuses on formal volunteering. Penner (2002) defines formal volunteering as “long-term, planned, prosocial behaviors that benefit strangers and occur within an organizational setting” (448). For the purpose of this study, the organizational context is the primary difference between formal volunteering and informal volunteering. There has been a great deal of research on why some individuals volunteer while others may never volunteer through or for a formal organization (for reviews, see Musick and Wilson 2008; Wilson 2012).

Much like public service motivation, altruism, concern for others, and self-sacrifice are identified as important motivations for prosocial behavior and volunteering. Penner (2002) describes a prosocial personality that consists of two dimensions: empathy or concern for the welfare of others and helpfulness or self-sacrifice. Batson suggests that volunteers are motivated by egoism, altruism, collectivism, and principlism, which is a sense of duty and justice (Baston, Ahmad, and Tsang 2002). Clary and Snyder (1999) discuss the functions volunteering serves and their assessment on the Volunteer Functions Inventory, which are values, understanding, enhancement, career, social, and protective.

The main personal resources related to volunteering are education, work, and income. Education encourages volunteering because it increases awareness of problems, empathy, and self-confidence (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). Those with more education are also more likely to be asked to volunteer, which is partly due to belonging to more organizations. However, the importance of education depends on the type of volunteer work. For example, education is positively related to political volunteering but not to informal community work (Snyder and Omoto 1992). The significance of education also increases when the volunteer activity requires literacy skills compared to social skills (Okun and Eisenberg 1992). Wilson (2012) even notes, “Educational achievement is perhaps the most important ‘asset’ as far as volunteering is concerned, at least in advanced industrial societies” (185).

The personal resource of employment increases the likelihood of an individual volunteering because work fosters social integration and civic skills (Wilson 2000). One would assume that the more free time people had the more they would be able to volunteer; however, the lowest rates of volunteering are among the unemployed (Wilson 2000). This supports the theory that paid work fosters social integration that in turn encourages volunteering. Having a paid job also boosts self-confidence and teaches organizational skills (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). Time plays a role in the impact of work on volunteering as self-employed individuals, those with flexible work schedules, and those with part-time jobs as a matter of choice are more likely to volunteer (Freeman 1997). Besides the amount of time dedicated to working, the type of job also seems to have an effect on volunteering. The likelihood of volunteering increases with occupational status, for example, managerial- and professional-level people are more likely to be asked to volunteer (Wilson and Musick 1997).

Research on income provides mixed evidence on the impact of this personal resource on volunteering. Freeman (1997) finds that the hours of volunteering decreases as wage income increases among those who volunteer. Among the elderly, Gallagher (1994) finds that income increases the number of organizations one belongs to but not the overall number of hours volunteered. Thus, income does not restrain volunteering, but the effects of income vary by measures of income, the population, measures of volunteering, and other variables included in the model (Wilson 2000).

Formal Volunteer Hours

Many are interested not only in whether individuals volunteer but also in how much time volunteers dedicate to the organization. Interestingly, the volunteer rate of a given subgroup does not necessarily correspond with the amount of time devoted to volunteering. For example, women are more likely to volunteer, but male volunteers are more likely to devote more hours and African Americans are less likely to volunteer than whites are, but African American volunteers devote more hours (Musick and Wilson 2008). However, some groups, such as middle-aged people, college graduates, and parents, are more likely to volunteer, but then no more or less likely than others to devote more hours (Musick and Wilson 2008). Therefore, this article will examine differences in the number of hours volunteers devote to formal organizations across sectors and levels of government in addition to variations in volunteer rates.

Informal Volunteering

Many have called for a greater examination of informal volunteering, and there has been much discussion over how to define these informal helping and caring behaviors (Cnaan, Handy, and Wadsworth 1996; Musick and Wilson 2008; Smith 1995). However, it is generally agreed that the primary distinction between informal volunteering and formal volunteering is that informal volunteering does not take place through or for a formal organization. “Volunteer work is a form of bureaucratized help, not to be confused with informal helping, which is unpaid service people provide on a more casual basis, outside of any organizational context, to someone in need” (Musick and Wilson 2008, 23). The Independent Sector and the United Nations Volunteers use the term “unmanaged volunteering” to refer to informal volunteering, which they define as “the spontaneous and sporadic helping that takes place between friends and neighbors—for example, child care, running errands, and loaning equipment—or in response to natural or man-made disasters” (Dingle 2001, 7). Little is known about the determinants and trends of informal volunteering, though some argue that informal volunteering is a complement rather than substitute for formal volunteering and can be used to engage underprivileged populations (Taniguchi 2012; Williams 2004). Given the relative lack of research that discusses both informal and formal volunteering, this article examines potential variations in both.

DATA

This study draws upon data from the Current Population Survey, which is a monthly household survey of about 60,000 households conducted by the US Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics that provides a comprehensive body of information on the employment experience of the Nation’s population (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2012). Besides employment information, the Current Population Survey has several monthly supplements. This article focuses on the September Volunteer Supplement along with the core monthly labor force data for September from the 2011 Current Population Survey. The Current Population Survey uses a multistage probability sample based on the results of the decennial census covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia. For the September 2011 basic Current Population Survey, the household-level nonresponse rate was 9% and the person-level nonresponse rate for the September Volunteer supplement was 12.3%. Overall, the Current Population Survey has relatively low nonresponse rates and “probability samples have the advantage of eliminating bias at the selection step” (Groves 2006, 668).

The sample consists of 60,697 employed individuals who were given both the September Volunteer Supplement and the occupational portion of the 2011 Current Population Survey since data on both volunteering and sector employment are vital for this analysis. This sample consists of 10,131 government sector employees, 4,659 nonprofit sector employees, and 46,177 for-profit sector employees. Among government employees, 1,914 work at the federal level, 3,186 work at the state level, and 5,031 work at the local level. Since sector employment is the main independent variable of interest, indicator variables are used in the analysis for the public and nonprofit sector, which were coded 1 if the individual worked in the sector and 0 otherwise. The public sector is also broken down by levels of government with indicators for federal, state, and local government employment.

Three measures of volunteering are used in the analysis. First, formal volunteer status will be examined, which is an indicator for whether or not an individual volunteered through or for a formal organization over the past year. For formal volunteering, respondents were asked “Since September 1^st of last year, have you done any volunteer activities through or for an organization?” with the follow-up question “Sometimes people don’t think of activities they do infrequently or activities they do for children’s schools or youth organizations as volunteer activities. Since September 1^st of last year, have you done any of these types of volunteer activities?” (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2012). Second, formal volunteer hours will be explored, which is the annual number of hours volunteers devoted to the main organization for which he or she volunteered.

Third, informal volunteering will be examined using an indicator variable for whether or not an individual informally volunteered or helped his or her community over the past year. Some of the survey definitions of informal volunteering are very broad, such as from the American Time Use Survey that defines informal as “caring for and providing help to non-household members including both children and adults” (Taniguchi 2012, 8). Similarly broad, the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study asks: “By volunteer activity I mean not just belonging to a service organization but actually working in some way to help others for no monetary pay” (Cnaan et al. 2010, 500). However, some measures of informal volunteering are much more specific examining various aspects of informal volunteering individually. For example, Finkelstein and Brannick (2007) compile an informal volunteering scale from a variety of comprehensive surveys, which includes a factor “helped your neighborhood or community where you live” (106). This article uses a similar measure to examine one type of informal volunteering, improving the community, due to the data available and the wide range of definitions of informal volunteering.¹ For informal volunteering, respondents were asked “Since September 1^st, 2010, have you worked with other people from your neighborhood to fix a problem or improve a condition in your community or elsewhere?” (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2012). Although overreporting of volunteering and other socially desirable behaviors is an issue with survey research, research on voting finds that those who overreport tend to have voted in the past if not most recently and in general, “social desirability bias in questionnaire measurement may be less prevalent than has been assumed” (Krosnick 1999, 546).

In this sample, 15,936 or 26% of the respondents have volunteered in the past year. The number of hours these individuals devoted to the main organization they volunteered for varies greatly with a mean of 96h and a median of 36h. In terms of informal volunteering, 5,328 individuals or 9% of the sample worked with other people from their neighborhood to fix or improve something over the past year. Less than 6% of the sample volunteered both formally and informally, where about 22% of those who volunteer formally also volunteer informally. The percentage of employees in each sector that reported each of these volunteering outcomes is shown in table 2.

Descriptively, nonprofit employees have the highest formal volunteer rate, followed by state government employees, local government employees, and federal government employees. The volunteer rate for the nonprofit sector is nearly double that of the for-profit sector. Nonprofit employees devote the most time to volunteering with an average of 105h among nonprofit volunteers, followed by local government with 101h. Nonprofit employees also have the highest informal volunteer rate, which is more than twice that of the for-profit sector. However, there is not as much variation in informal volunteer rates between public and nonprofit sector employees (12% compared to 14%, respectively) and even less variation within the public sector.

Several control variables are used in this analysis to isolate the impact of employment sector on volunteering. The control variables include sociodemographic characteristics, state fixed effects, and the industry and occupation that the individual works in. Based on the literature on volunteering, the demographic control variables included are age, marital status, gender, whether the respondent has a child under the age of 18, race, ethnicity, weekly earnings, and education level. In light of Feeney’s (2008) finding that state-level managers in Georgia are less likely to have positive views of the public sector compared to those in Illinois, state fixed effects are included to account for any political or cultural impacts they may have on the results.

Industry and occupation are also included because people may be drawn to a specific industry or occupation regardless of the sector. As Rainey (2009) writes, “Many factors, such as size, task or function, and industry characteristics, can influence an organization more than its status as a governmental entity. Research needs to show that these alternative factors do not confuse analysis of differences between public organizations and other types” (80). For example, Steinhaus and Perry (1996) found that industry categories were better at explaining variances in employee’s organizational commitment than the public/private dichotomy. Table 3 shows the distribution of occupation by employment sector and levels of government. As shown below, all occupations are represented across job sectors and levels of government with management, professional, and financial occupations being the largest occupation group across sectors. Therefore, control variables include indicator variables for 6 occupations and 13 industries using the major group Bureau of Labor Statistics classifications.²

MODELS AND METHODOLOGY

Two models will be used to examine the impact of sector employment on volunteering. The first model will include the sociodemographic variables, industry and occupation indicators, and state fixed effects to examine the impact of government and nonprofit sector employment compared to for-profit sector employment, the excluded category. The second model will include the sociodemographic variables, industry and occupation indicators, and state fixed effects to examine the impact of federal, state, and local government employment and nonprofit sector employment compared to for-profit sector employment.

The relationship between free time, work, and volunteering is quite complex. Time plays an important role in the decision to volunteer and the amount of time volunteers devote to volunteering. Part-time employees volunteer more than both full-time employees and those who do not work (Einolf 2011; Musick and Wilson 2008). “Counter intuitively, among fulltime workers, volunteer hours increase as paid work hours increase” (Wilson 2012, 11). Across sectors, a majority of employees in the sample are full time with the number of part-time employees ranging from a low of 6% in the federal government and a high of nearly a quarter of the workforce in the nonprofit sector. Due to the varying patterns of volunteering by work schedule, each model is run first for part-time employees only and then again for full-time employees only.

Logistic regression is used to examine the formal and informal volunteering dependent variables since these are both dichotomous variables, which take on a 1 if the individual volunteered, formally or informally respectively, and a 0 otherwise. For formal and informal volunteering, I examine the following models separately for part-time and full-time employees:

Negative binomial regression is used to examine the volunteer hours dependent variable since it is the count number of hours volunteers devoted to volunteering over the past year.

For volunteer hours, I examine the following models separately for part-time and full-time employees who volunteer:

X₁ = Indicator variables for nonprofit and government employment, compared to for-profit

X₂ = Vector of sociodemographic variables

X₃ = Vector of industry and occupation variables

X₄ = State fixed effects

X₅ = Indicator variables for nonprofit and government by levels of government (federal, state, local), compared to for-profit

ε = Random error

ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

Employment Sector and Formal Volunteer Status

Table 4 shows the results for the logistic regression of formal volunteering on employment sector with odds ratios (OR) and robust standard errors (RSE) reported. Model 1 shows that both public and nonprofit sector employees are more likely than their for-profit sector counterparts to volunteer through or for a formal organization, regardless of whether they are part time or full time. However, the impact of sector appears to be greater for full-time employees compared to part-time. In comparing part-time employees, the odds of nonprofit sector employees volunteering are 1.35 times higher than the odds of for-profit sector employees volunteering, and the odds of public sector employees volunteering are 1.24 times higher than they are for for-profit sector employees. The differences across the sectors were slightly higher for full-time employees, where the odds of nonprofit employees volunteering are 1.65 times that of for-profit sector employees and the odds of public employees volunteering are 1.43 higher than the odds of for-profit sector employees volunteering. Using a Wald test for inequality in coefficients, I find that the 1.65 odds for nonprofit employees are also significantly higher than the 1.43 odds for public sector employees.

Model 2 in table 4 shows the results broken down by level of government. Among part-time employees, only nonprofit and local government employees are more likely to formally volunteer than for-profit sector employees. No significant differences were found in the odds of part-time federal government, state government, or for-profit sector employees volunteering. Among full-time employees, nonprofit sector employees were found most likely to volunteer, where the odds of nonprofit employees volunteering are 1.66 times higher than the odds of for-profit sector employees volunteering, followed by local, state, and federal government employees.

The findings for the sociodemographic characteristics in table 4 mirrored those found in previous research across all models. Females tend to volunteer more than males. Formal volunteering seems to peak in midlife. Social factors like having a child and being married increase one’s likelihood of volunteering and the strongest predictor of volunteering is level of education. For industry and occupations, employees in management and sales are more likely to formally volunteer and those in mining are less likely.

Overall, employees in the nonprofit sector volunteer at the highest rates regardless of their work schedule. The odds of public sector employees volunteering are higher than the odds of for-profit sector employees volunteering, with the exception of part-time state and federal government employees. These findings show the importance of examining variations within the public sector and examining patterns of volunteering by work schedule. These results support my hypotheses that nonprofit employees would be the most likely to volunteer formally and that local government employees would be more likely to volunteer than federal and state government employees.

Employment Sector and Formal Volunteer Hours

Table 5 shows the negative binomial regression results for the number of hours volunteers devote to the main organization for which he or she volunteered over the past year with incidence rate ratios (IRR) and standard errors (SE) are reported.³ These analyses only include volunteers so are intended to determine if any sectoral differences exist in the amount of time volunteers themselves devote to volunteering rather than the decision to volunteer, which is discussed above. Model 1 fails to find any statistically significant differences in the amount of time volunteers devote to volunteering across sectors for both part-time and full-time employees. However, after breaking the public sector down by levels of government, part-time state government employees will have 0.7 times the incident events as part-time for-profit employees. Meanwhile, full-time local government employees will have 1.12 times the incident events as full-time for-profit employees. Therefore, these results show surprising differences within the government sector, where state government employees may contribute less time to volunteering than those in the for-profit sector, whereas local government employees may contribute more time to volunteering than those in the for-profit sector.

Similar to previous studies, the factors associated with the amount of time volunteers devote to volunteering, shown in table 5, are quite different from the factors associated with the decision to volunteer. For race, whites were found more likely to volunteer, but African Americans are found more likely to devote a greater amount of time to volunteering across all models. Education level also presents an interesting dichotomy between volunteer status and volunteer hours. Graduate school education was found to be the largest predictor of volunteering, but graduate school has a positive impact on volunteer hours for part-time employees and a negative impact on volunteer hours for full-time employees. This may indicate that education has a positive impact on volunteering up to a certain point, where the focus may then shift to one’s career rather than devoting free time to volunteering. For age, the results for volunteer hours shows that while those in midlife have the greatest likelihood of volunteering, those developing their careers and social network devote less time to volunteering and part-time older employees devote the most.

Overall, these findings support my hypothesis that local government employees will devote more hours to volunteering than state and federal government employees, where state employees were found to devote less time. These results suggest that among volunteers, there are significant nuances in the amount of time that federal, state, and local government employees devote. Examining both formal volunteer status and the amount of time those volunteers devote to the organizations paints a more complete picture of patterns of volunteering.

Employment Sector and Informal Volunteering

Table 6 shows the results for the logistic regression of informal volunteering on employment sector with odds ratios and robust standard errors reported. Among part-time employees, only nonprofit sector employees are more likely to engage in informal volunteering. Among full-time employees, the odds of nonprofit employees informally volunteering are 1.61 higher than the odds of for-profit sector employees informally volunteering, followed by the public sector with odds 1.51 times higher than that of the for-profit sector.

In Model 2, among part-time employees, only nonprofit and local government employees are more likely to volunteer informally. In examining informal volunteering by levels of government for full-time employees, the odds of local government employees informally volunteering are 1.65 times higher than the odds of for-profit sector employees informally volunteering. Closely following local government employees in informal volunteering, the odds of nonprofit sector employees volunteering are 1.62 times higher that of for-profit sector employees. Full-time state and federal government employees are also more likely to informally volunteer compared to for-profit sector employees, with odds 1.44 and 1.27 times higher than the odds for-profit sector respectively. Nonprofit and local government employees are the most likely to help improve their neighborhood, which may be due to the other- and community-oriented aspects of their job sectors.

This study found that some patterns of informal volunteering mirror those of formal volunteering as shown in table 6. Like formal volunteering, having children increases the odds of informal volunteering, where the odds of informally volunteering are 1.22 (part-time employees) or 1.15 (full-time employees) times higher for those with children than the odds of those without children. Also similar to the relationship for formal volunteering, the odds of an individual informally volunteering increases with education level and age and employees in management, business, and financial occupations as well as sales and related occupations tend to be more likely to informally volunteer. Employees who work in agriculture are less likely to informally volunteer compared to all other industries. Unlike formal volunteering, females are less likely to volunteer informally than males. Also opposite the relationship found for formal volunteering, among full-time employees, African Americans are more likely to volunteer informally than whites. Additional research is needed to better understand informal volunteering, but these results suggest that informal volunteering may draw upon different motivations and characteristics than formal volunteering.⁴ These findings also support previous research that suggests informal volunteering engages different populations than formal volunteering (Williams 2004), which should be further explored to paint a more complete picture of volunteering.

Overall, nonprofit sector and local government employees consistently informally volunteer more than for-profit sector employees, regardless of work schedule. Only full-time state and federal government employees also tend to informally volunteer more than for-profit employees. These results support my hypotheses that government and nonprofit employees would be more likely to volunteer informally than for-profit employees and that local government employees would be more likely to informally volunteer than federal and state government employees.

CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS, AND MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS

In line with the other-oriented nature of public and nonprofit sector employees and the few studies that have examined the impact of sector employment on prosocial behaviors, public and nonprofit sector employees tend to volunteer more than their for-profit sector counterparts. However, these findings illustrate several important nuances when taking work schedule, levels of government, and additional measures of volunteering into account. Nonprofit sector employees are the most likely to volunteer, regardless of whether they work full time or part time. When looking at public sector employees as a whole, public sector employees are more likely to volunteer than for-profit sector employees, regardless of whether they work full time or part time. However, in examining formal volunteering by levels of government, all full-time government employees are more likely to volunteer, but only part-time local government employees are more likely to volunteer than part-time for-profit sector employees. No clear relationship was found between sector and the formal volunteer hours, except that part-time state government employees tend to devote less time and full-time local government employees tend to devote more time. For informal volunteering, local government employees were found most likely to help in the community, followed by nonprofit sector employees, regardless of work schedule. Only full-time, state and federal government employees were found more likely to volunteer informally compared to the for-profit sector. These findings suggest that perhaps nonprofit sector and local government employees are more other-oriented and community-oriented than not only those in the for-profit sector, but also state and federal government employees.

This study builds upon the work of Houston (2006, 2008) to examine the prosocial behaviors—in this case volunteering—by employment sector. Like Houston’s (2006) results with the General Social Survey, this study found that both government and nonprofit employees are more likely to formally volunteer than for-profit sector employees. Although Houston’s (2008) results only found that government employees are more likely to volunteer, his finding seems largely due to the type of employees considered nongovernmental public service that may be quite different from traditional nonprofit employees.⁵ Therefore, these results support previous work finding that government and nonprofit employees are more likely to volunteer formally and contribute to our understanding of the relationship between employment sectors and volunteering by highlighting important nuances when taking level of government, work schedule, and additional measures of volunteering into account. These results also support notion that government and nonprofit employees tend to be motivated by pure altruism through the nature of their work compared to the for-profit sector (Francois and Vlassopoulos 2008).

Understanding engagement in public service is arguably even more important as social capital and civic engagement decline. Putnam (1995, 2000) argues that precipitous drops in social capital and civic engagement over the past 25 years have created grave consequences for democracy and governance. This is in stark contrast to the America that Alexis de Tocqueville (1831) described after his visit: “As soon as several of the inhabitants of the United States have taken up an opinion or a feeling which they wish to promote in the world, they look out for mutual assistance; and as soon as they have found each other out, they combine” (475). Putnam (2000) expresses concern with this decline, writing that “the health of American democracy requires citizens to perform our public duties and. . . the health of our public institution depends, at least in part, on widespread participation in private voluntary groups- those networks of civic engagement that embody social capital.”

This article examines one aspect of prosocial behavior and civic engagement—volunteering—to shed light on whether public and nonprofit employees are more altruistic than for-profit employees. Because volunteering is an important component of building social capital, variations in employee volunteering across sectors and levels of government could be instructive to efforts to enhance prosocial behavior and sustain social capital. Ostrom and Ahn (2009) define social capital as “an attribute of individuals and of their relationships that enhance their ability to solve collective action problems” (22). Musick and Wilson (2008) review the five key ways volunteering encourages good citizenship: building trust; developing a belief in the social contract underlying society; getting involved; learning civic skills; and raising social awareness. In addition, Putnam (2000) emphasizes the importance of trust and engagement for good citizenship as he writes, “. . .people who trust others are all-around good citizens, and those more engaged in community life are both more trusting and more trustworthy” (137). Therefore, if public and nonprofit sector employees are more likely to volunteer, as found in this study, they can also lead the way in rebuilding social capital through the act of volunteering.

Sectoral differences remain understudied and the public/private debate continues to be unresolved. These findings go beyond the bulk of the research on public sector distinctiveness, which focus on management techniques and organizations, to examine characteristics of the employees themselves. Are public sector employees fundamentally different from for-profit sector employees in at least some noteworthy respects? These analyses find that they are—public sector employees are more likely to volunteer than for-profit sector employees. Perhaps the other-oriented nature of public servants extends beyond the motivation to work in public service to help others when they are off the clock as well. Additional research on public sector distinctiveness is needed to help public and for-profit managers better understand not only their organizations and management strategies but also their employees. This line of research would help public and for-profit managers alike in understanding the motivations and behavior of their employees to manage, recruit, and retain effective employees.

This article goes beyond the public/private divide to examine differences across all three sectors—public, nonprofit, and for-profit. Future studies should also include the third sector for a more complete analysis so that we may learn more about the expanding nonprofit sector, which is difficult to classify as entirely public or entirely for-profit. Researchers who have begun to examine the nonprofit sector emphasize the importance of these employees helping others that is similar to the other-orientated nature of public servants. These findings support these claims and studies. Nonprofit sector employees were the most likely to volunteer through or for a formal organization and were the second most likely to volunteer informally, following only local government employees. Perhaps nonprofit and government employees share a common ethos that draws them to their mission-driven work, as opposed to the profit-driven work of their for-profit sector counterparts.

In light of these findings, nonprofit sector employees appear to be even more other-oriented than a majority of public servants. These findings have important implications for the recruitment and retention of public sector employees. If an individual wants to help others through their work, how do they choose between the public and nonprofit sector? In the bureaucratic environment of public sector work, how do you ensure these other-oriented employees feel like they are making a difference? Future studies should include the nonprofit sector into the public/private debate and more work needs to be done comparing the public and nonprofit sectors. Little is known about the differences between the two mission-driven sectors and their employees, which is vital in light of the “quiet crises” in the government workforce coupled with the blurring of the boundaries across sectors.

The public sector often is not differentiated by levels of government, but there may be important distinctions within the sector across the federal, state, and local levels. For example, local teachers almost certainly differ from federal bureaucrats at the Department of Education, but even in similar occupations, state compliance officers may be different from federal compliance officers due to the nature of their work. These results suggest that there are important differences between federal, state, and local government employees in volunteering. These results show that local government employees are more prone to volunteering than federal and state government employees. These findings coalesce with research on public trust, where people tend to have the highest levels of trust in local government. Additional research is needed to understand differences across levels of government, especially in light of the proliferation of lazy bureaucrat stereotypes and the steady decline of public trust following the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal. Future studies should examine differences across levels of government in order to dismiss potential misconceptions and better understand employee behavior.

In terms of research on volunteering, these findings show the importance of taking work schedule into account as differences were found between the volunteering patterns of part-time employees compared to full-time employees. In addition, examining informal volunteering in addition to formal volunteering as well as the amount of time volunteers devote to volunteering paints a much more complete picture of patterns of volunteering. Future research should consider additional factors in describing the current state of volunteering and examining determinants of volunteering. Additional findings and details on patterns of volunteering can assist nonprofit organization in recruiting volunteers that would best match the needs of the organization.

Overall, these findings suggest that nonprofit and local government employees are more other-oriented and community-oriented than for-profit sector employees through their tendencies to volunteer both formally and informally. Nonprofit and local government employees may be more likely to volunteer because they are more entrenched in their communities and more knowledgeable of current issues and social problems or the employees themselves may be driven by unique motivations. The public sector (and nonprofit sector) is indeed distinct, at least in terms of the other-oriented employees who can perhaps pave the way to revive civic engagement.

REFERENCES