Review of Public Personnel Administration

Has any gender-based pay adjustment made by the states in the past 25 years had an effect on women’s relative pay? The authors utilize a panel set of EEO-4 data on public sector employment by state to investigate the pay of women relative to men for 1999-2005. The authors find that there is a significant difference in the relative pay of women employed in states that have had a major pay adjustment in female-dominated job classes upward at any time in the past quarter century. Utilizing GLS multiple regression to predict the relative pay gaps by state, the authors find that women are better paid relative to men in the public sector than the private. The authors also find that women are better paid relative to men in Elazar’s traditionalistic states as opposed to individualistic and moralistic ones, which are usually credited with having more progressive public policies.

As a stigmatized group, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered (LGBT) individuals are vulnerable to employment discrimination and receive little legal protection. They have had to cope with discrimination and engage in identity management to conceal their sexual identity. This study seeks to determine whether LGBT individuals, in anticipation of discrimination, have lower initial career expectations, espouse more altruistic work values, and make career choices based on those work values, when compared to heterosexual individuals. Using data from a large survey of postsecondary students, we found that LGBT individuals, after controlling for age, visible minority status, and major of study, reported lower salary expectations than heterosexual individuals. LGBT individuals were also more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to espouse “altruistic” work values and to indicate a career choice in the nonprofit sector. We suggest that “altruism” may be an important work value that is related to a career choice in the public and nonprofit sectors.

This article centers on a comparison of diversity policies in Dutch public and private sector organizations and their effectiveness in improving ethnic minority representation. Data have been obtained from 8,283 annual reports of Dutch organizations in 2001 and 2002. Three types of diversity policies are analyzed: (a) policies designed to analyze ethnic minority representation, (b) policies designed to improve the influx of ethnic minorities in organizations, and (c) policies designed to improve the management of a diverse workforce in organizations. Results show that public sector organizations report more diversity policies and different types of diversity policies than do private sector organizations. In terms of effectiveness, only policies designed to improve the management of a diverse workforce seem to affect the representation of ethnic minorities in organizations in the short term. No sectoral differences in the effectiveness of various policy types were found.

Motivation scholars have argued that intrinsic motivation is an important driver of employee attitudes. This research tests the influence of intrinsic motivation on employee attitudes and explores three factors conditioning the effects of intrinsic motivation: managerial trustworthiness, goal directedness, and extrinsic reward expectancy. The analysis demonstrates that intrinsic motivation is substantively associated with both employee satisfaction and turnover intention. It also reveals that the three conditional factors interact with intrinsic motivation. Managerial trustworthiness and goal directedness increase the leverage of intrinsic motivation on employee satisfaction, whereas extrinsic rewards expectancy decreases the leverage. With respect to turnover intention, the factors directly influence it rather than affect it indirectly through intrinsic motivation. The implications of the results for theory and managerial strategies for employee motivation are discussed.

Telework is an increasingly common feature of government agencies. Long a practice in the private sector, telework is credited with a range of advantages from increased productivity to reduced environmental costs to society. These advantages may not accrue to all employees, however. Large-sample federal government surveys of employees reveal support for many of the claimed advantages of telework, but taken together they also raise significant questions about the seldom-discussed costs of telework: The impact on those barred from telework. In particular, the results reveal what may be disaffection among those whose jobs may be eligible for teleworking under new Office of Personnel Management guidelines, but whose managers have not allowed them to telework. The findings also raise questions about the consequences of expanding telework to larger populations of government workers and suggest the need for further research on the possibility of an emerging telework divide.