In the past, claims have been made regarding the existence and value of a public service ethos and its associations with new public management, professional values and occupational commitment. The present research adopts a rare approach to investigating these constructs, directed towards finding a method to assess the strength of these values and beliefs held by professionals working in the public sector. This led to the development of scales to measure, specifically, professional values, public service ethos, and new public management ideology and to assess the nature and direction of relationships. Thirty-eight hypotheses were tested and these revealed both empirical evidence to confirm claims made in the literature and some unexpected findings. Two separate studies were designed and conducted to enable such evidence to be gathered; Study 1 (N = 205) is concerned with demonstrating the reliability of these measures through generating, testing and re-testing of items comprising the scales, and involved professionals employed in both the public and private sectors. Study 2 (N =433) focused on learning professionals delivering programmes in further and higher education colleges throughout England. Findings from both studies added to the development and validity of these scales and provide a base-line measure on which to compare in the future. Further, this empirical evidence answers a number of research questions making an original contribution to theory in the fields of Public Sector Management and Organisational Behaviour, and reveal potential areas for future research. In particular, three key findings emerge: i) Public service ethos predicts organisational citizenship behaviour whereas new public management is either unrelated or negatively related to such behaviour. ii) Levels of affective organisational commitment are higher for individuals who identify more strongly with new public management ideology than for any of the other independent variables measured in this research. iii) Perceived organisational support and job satisfaction mediate relationships between new public management ideology and organisational commitment.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:485263 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Rayner, Julie |
| Publisher | University of Leeds |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.0114 seconds