For example, for NASA GISS administrator, James Hansen, aka patient zero, seen below being arrested at a climate protest.
UGA research reveals public servants individually motivated to help environment
Athens, Ga. – New University of Georgia research shows that while on the job, public servants contribute not just to mandated sustainability but also to discretionary eco-friendly initiatives of their own.
“Some people are born with a higher intrinsic need to serve the public,” said study co-author Robert K. Christensen, an associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs. “They have a desire to help others and serve society. Government and nonprofit managers, for example, typically have higher levels of public service motivation than business managers.”
The study in the American Review of Public Administration used a survey of hundreds of public servants in a large southeastern city to examine their environmental and organizational behaviors.
Authored by Justin M. Stritch, a former doctoral student in public administration and policy, and Christensen, who also is the school’s Ph.D. director in the department of public administration and policy, the research found that public servants were likely to engage in eco initiatives.
“Eco initiatives are discretionary, pro-environmental behaviors that an employee can participate in during the day,” said Stritch, who is now an assistant professor at Arizona State University. “Eco initiatives involve things like recycling or energy conservation. Reusing water bottles and turning off your computer screen are examples.”
Eco initiatives include sustainable micro-level behaviors, small tasks that are done voluntarily by the employee. When an employee chooses to do things like save paper or turn off lights at work, they are participating in eco initiatives. Eco initiatives are done because employees choose to do them, not because they’re enforced.
In the survey, public servants in the southeastern city from departments like neighborhood and business services, fire, police, human resources and the city manager’s office reported their environmental and workplace behaviors. The results showed that eco initiatives had to do with how motivated these public servants were to help society.
Public service motivation, a type of altruism, determines how people feel about the public and how they want to service public values. People with public service motivation can fulfill their desire to help society by choosing a job in government or a job in the private sector that helps citizens.
“Eco initiatives are correlated with the public service motivation of an individual,” Christensen said. “Public servants with high public service motivation engage in micro citizenship behaviors to benefit society on a broader basis.”
Along with public service motivation, two other predictors indicate a person’s likeliness to perform eco initiatives.
“The three key drivers are public service motivation, organizational commitment and environmental connectedness,” Stritch said. “The three work together to determine whether a person engages in eco initiatives.”
Environmental connectedness describes an individual’s attachment to nature. Having a strong connection to nature will increase an employee’s likelihood of performing environmental initiatives. An employee’s concern for the environment will help predict whether, and to what extent, they engage in eco initiatives.
“Even after accounting for an individual’s connectedness to nature, an employee’s public service motivation is a key factor in understanding voluntary, eco initiatives in the public workplace,” Christensen said.
Stritch and Christensen hope that future studies will examine how institutional arrangements and mandated sustainability initiatives in cities change environmental commitment and behavior.
“Our hope is that people begin to think about stewardship and public resources in a broader way,” Stritch said. “We want to see how public servants consider the environment over time and in different places.”
“We have some compelling, if not preliminary, evidence that government workers often have the motivation to go above and beyond to benefit the environment while working in jobs that benefit society,” Christensen said.
The full article, published online ahead of print, is available at http://arp.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/09/29/0275074014552470.full.pdf+html. For more information on the School of Public and International Affairs, see http://spia.uga.edu/.
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“We have some compelling, if not preliminary, evidence that government workers often have the motivation to go above and beyond to benefit the environment while working in jobs that benefit society,” Christensen said.
But they only asked government workers, so they have no idea if this is more or less prevalent among non-government workers. Also they only asked people in one southeastern city. So maybe the motivation is a regional thing and not a government employee thing.
Only tells me that Govt. workers don’t have enough to do on the job, and if they can afford the off-time, they are paid too much.
It’s always about the same schism: work and feed off government, such as science research funding predisposes a top-down, pro-government outlook. Most climate science parties are solidly leftist consistent with academics and the AGW meme itself.
Enough to do on the job …. is immaterial and irrelevant to ….
“Environmental connectedness describes an individual’s attachment to” ….. doing whatever the other government employees are doing to prevent themselves from being shunned and/or “badmouthed” by their co-workers…… and iffen its doing “green” then the liberal press will give them free publicity and high praises for doing their “green” thingys instead of doing their jobs …. and a large percentage of the local populace will follow suit with their “approval” simply because said populace is incapable of “making-the-connection” between …. public employees and the work they are being paid to perform.
Ok, OK. Fine! I’ll go to Lima and Copenhagen. But THAT’S IT!!!
Exactly my first thought. The other point they’ve not mentioned is the workplace pressure to perform these duties. All offices have bins for recyclable and not. So they have no choice but to comply, and then this gets spun as a morale duty.
Very poor science. Just like everything the left get their hands on.
I bet I’m not the first person to see another possible link between government employees and eco warriors.
The link is strongest in public academia from my (retired civil service employee) perspective. Particularly the young women of the faculty and staff were outspokenly frightened about the “human footprint on this planet”. There was a large contingent of Prius’s parked next to luxury cars and our (the staff’s) less-than-luxury cars in faculty/staff lots during my last year (2012) as I recall.
I also got kicked out of a band I played in after disclosing my views on climate manipulation to three K-12 teachers also in the band and recommending this blog. (“You perform OK, you’re just not working out well with the group…”)
What was the name of the band, “One Note Nelly”?
Que Eisenhower’s farewell address. Even I, after reading and posting this many times, did not realize that Eisenhower put the “scientific-technological elite” on the same level of threat as he did the military/industrial complex… Here is is..
_____________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
I would posit that what Eisenhower warned of related to
Thank you… sincerely.
Excellent.
Superb catch. Quoted this in my previous book, and still did not catch the full drift because used only the short military/industrial complex version…I like Ike.
You know, I have read this a hundred times but never went back to read in its full context. Ike put this on the same level of threat to liberty as the military industrial complex. I have been researching this for a while and an interesting aspect that Ike would have been familiar with is the phenomenon known as “Technocracy”. Today the word “technocrat” has a largely positive spin on it but from the end of WWI to the mid 1930’s it was a “movement” not unlike (actually it is the direct ancestor) the “Limits to Growth” style of appeal to authority.
In the between the wars period the appeal to authority was an engineering analysis related to the dramatic increase in productivity that according to their charts and graphs, would lead to the unemployment of millions and that the only solution was to turn the government over to the “technocrats” who understood technology and who could “manage” technological growth to lead us into a promised new age.
Sound familiar?
Oh, you bring up Ike…
That old conspiracy theorist.
/sarc
I find the phrase “public servant” to be one of the most disgusting oxymorons in current use today.
“Self-identified Lord and Master of the Peasantry” would be a far more fitting description.
If only they did serve us!
+1
I always loved it when Will Rodgers talked about going down to Washington to check on the hired help.
Will Rodgers also said,
We should be grateful we are not getting all the government our taxes pay for.
(or some such)
More like “public teat suckers”
I vote for “public self-serving servant”.
Public servants disrespect their public masters.
Actual story: people who belong to the left/collectivist side of the political spectrum tend to have indoctrinated eco-believer views, and tend to work for the government instead of private industry.
… and tend to hire only those with similar views.
That’s very true indeed! This is also the reason for the intellectual inbreeding in certain kinds of professions like e.g. teachers, journalists and – last but least – climate scientists… 😉
Ups: “last but NOT least” of course…
You were right the first time, they are definitely amongst the least of us.
“This is also the reason for the intellectual inbreeding in certain kinds of professions like e.g. teachers, journalists and – last but least – climate scientists… 😉”
——————
OOOH, …. now I liked that … cause it sure was a truly “goodern”.
In my experience, a solid majority of those who go in for govt work, wouldn’t be hirable in the private sector.
Do you honestly believe any of them are capable of work outside the public womb? i think not one of them has the right attitude for that.
There are a few who could be trained to say “Would you like fries with that?”.
I found that it really depends on the department one examines. In the Defense Department, the level of employability on the outside was inversely proportional to the distant their job was from actual missions. The civilians in operations and intelligence were usually dedicated, sharp and hard-working. The ones in deep logistics sometimes had to be blasted off their seats with a stick of TNT to get anything done. In the broader intelligence community, the folks at CIA tended to be more liberal than the DoD folks, but looked like extreme right-wingers when compared to the State Department guys. The FBI guys tended to be very territorial and one way with things and politically all over the map.The treasury guys were kind of laid back, but I didn’t work with them enough to really comment on their work ethic. When I retired, Homeland Security was still trying to get its legs under it and quite frankly was a bureaucratic mess. The culture there was sincere confusion, but maybe they have worked something out by now. Though with this administration ushering it through its growing pains, it is probably similar in culture to the State Department – left edge.
And studies conducted by professors at schools of Public and International Affairs tend to find good things out about people in the public sector and also probably about people involved in international affairs also.
…born with a higher need to serve the public…”?
Born with?
Need?
Semantic gibberish.
These are “otherwise unemployables.” “You know, morons.” (Blazing saddles)
Who needs to be elected when you can become a “public servant”……
I have late breaking news for you. Elected politicians; by definition ARE public servants.
Actually, no, by literal definition politicians are NOT public servants. Public servants are members of the “civil service.” The “public servant” position is protected by the fact that they are NOT elected. Watch some “Yes Minister” reruns, or better scan through some of these: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yes,_Minister.
In the US, the framers of the constitution exempted the pay of US politicians from electoral pressure. The congress can vote themselves raises or screw things up royally and never ever have to worry about their paycheck until an election comes around. A public servant on the other hand can have their pay stopped when political parties engage in zero-sum tactics and run the country into a spending halt, but they can’t be fired by a vote. That sort of thing will never effect a politician since they apparently are not paid through tax money, or, if they are, there’s always enough left to pay them indefinitely.
Also disrespecting of their public masters.
They are like they are because they are employed by politicians, and politicians have painted themselves into the CAGW corner and don’t know how to get themselves out.
MSM should expose this but they are in the same position as the politicians.
They don’t want to get out. Politicians seek to wield power and control. If you don’t have money, you can get control OVER money by becoming a politician.
Global warming provides everything they need to exert control over a vast amount of money. It’s not like they’re cowering in a corner saying “How the heck do we get out of this?”. They’re trying to make this last as long as they possibly can, so they can continue to control the power/money.
I like the name of the policeman.
Quite ironic isn’t it? I figured someone would catch it. I salute you.
because people in private industry have to earn a living and can be fired unlike their public servant counterparts??
Agenda 21/Smart Growth/Sustainable Development initiatives have been driven down from the U.N. to the federal government to the local government levels for years. It is a matter of repeated exposure through the government workplace that becomes/induces choice by default. Kinda like being forced to join a union.
Did Ike really repeat the 6th paragraph?
No, I messed up in the block quote.
Simple cure: ENFORCE THE HATCH ACT! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatch_Act_of_1939
Some one please tell me this ‘study’ was not funded by government.
Oh, is that what they are doing. The road to hell…
What utter dime-store psychobabble Leftist drivel.
Sad to say but you have high-lighted all the positives of the study, Bruce Cobb.
That brought a big grin, thanks
When asked by an eco-activist if they support eco-activists, people tend to answer yes.
When asked by an armored knight if they support armored knights, people tend to answer yes.
When asked by a Girl Scout if they support the Girl Scouts, people tend to answer yes.
OMG, too funny!
When asked by the Self-identified Lord and Master of the Peasantry if they support the Self-identified Lord and Master of the Peasantry, people tend to answer yes.
Eco-activism, thinly disguised as “rule making” by zealots with a “high need to serve the public”, has resulted in the evolution of our system of government from the rule of law to the rule of men. In many cases, the normal legislative process is bypassed by those in government who only have the “best interests of the citizens” in mind.
When major environmental legislation is considered, the language in the bill has been, in most cases written by these same zealots and their allies in the NGO movement, who, after all, are not “self interested”, but have only the “environment” in mind. In addition, many of the “environmental activists” who are employed by “environmental organizations” move right into government positions to further their agenda.
In those positions, they avail themselves of the best “science” that money can buy.
And 75% of sceptics work for the private sector: Survey: Where have you mainly worked?
Wow, I really buck that trend…career military followed by university employment…definitely skeptical of AGW.
Shh…you’ll be sent for re-education if you’re not careful!
I had 23 years of undetected crime in the navy.
Most of the leadership I knew we conservative.
Liberals generally have trouble doing 20+
Too many rules and you don’t get to make them.
It makes sense. If we got the results their models do in any field we’d have been fired a long time ago.
“””””…..“Some people are born with a higher intrinsic need to serve the public,” said study co-author Robert K. Christensen, an associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs. …..”””””
Unfortunately, they don’t have the necessary tools of discrimination to discern just what is actually ion the “public interest.”
Mostly, what is in the public interest, is to mind your own business.
And being “public servants”, it wouldn’t hurt if they actually did what their job description says they are being paid by the public to do. That is what the public interest really is; to have public servants do they job they are paid to do.
Which gene is that, the let me kick back and do as little as possible and screw with as many people as possible and get paid lots more than I’m worth gene?
Is that passed from the mother or father, generally?
They have higher intrinsic needs to serve others. Yea well there are a million ways to serve others. In fact the government couldn’t be more inefficient at serving others if they tried. Actually I think they have a higher gravy train desire than others. They love the unaccountability of bureaucratic policy to hide behind requiring no independent thought or real problem solving skills. Just check the box, don’t think, collect a check.
If you look for statistical averages of public vs. private, the title assumption of a preponderance of public employees makes some sense. But I suspect the green movement is more dependent upon certain classs than occupational cohorts.
In my experience, it’s leisured, middle, upper-middle and wealthy classes that have the time to dally with the green dreams of fixing societal ills, saving the rainforests, making a villain of Corporates, insinuating their views into everyday life, and clamping down on the priviledges that they can afford to feel “guilty” about, however briefly.
“””””…..New study translated: public servants are more likely to become eco-activists…..”””””
Eco-activist is a synonym for eco-terrorist.
I’m from the government and I’m here to help (the environment).
I’m from the government and I’m here to help (myself).
Y’all just typed Ronald Reagan’s “Nine Scariest Words Ever Heard!” (with parenthetical additions)
(And at your expense…)
“Eco initiatives involve things like recycling or energy conservation. Reusing water bottles and turning off your computer screen are examples.”
I do all that and I’m still not trembling in fear of climate change.
Anyway, the paper seems to discover a thing that is routinely re-discovered. I experienced it first-hand in Washington DC when a woman was screaming in a parking garage on a military base. The population on that base is mostly civilian, and they didn’t even turn their heads. But I, and about 30 other military persons, rushed over to the garage to intervene.
This has been discovered many times. Some people are “wired” (figuratively speaking) to intervene. Others are not. I can think of no way to go from one state of mind to the other or how it arises.