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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Could it be that public servants are required to follow the preferred government line accross many topics (or they usually lose their jobs). Contnued following of the official line over a number of years tends to quell any dissenting opinions and the official line is repeatedly re enforced, often to the point of fanatisism. Orwell called this “groupthink” in his novel 1984 and I’ve been convinced for a number of years that this is what we see in several government bodies around climate/environmental issues.
So the problem to a large extent is caused by organisational psychology.
Discovering that government employees endorse the green agenda is like discovering that dental hygienists endorse regular teeth cleaning.
OK, this is one of the few posts ever that actually made me laugh. This is a great thread!
I believe you have cause and effect backwards.
Eco-activists are more likely to become public servants.
Is it ironic the name of the cop arresting Hanson is “Green”…?
Yes. I saw that too. Funny. Also seeing Hanson tough sort of sticking out,… Senility is the diagnosis.
tongue, not tough
“Some people are born with a higher intrinsic need to serve the public”
Some people are also narcissistic and require attention.
As an employee of the public sector, I have witnessed a large disconnect between government supplied services, and resource based industries. My fellow employees are against any kind of resource based industry, be it fishing, forestry, mining, oil and gas, hydro electric power, etc., for environmental reasons. They have no idea where the money for their pay checks comes from.
I have to keep pointing out to my co-workers, that most of the local government’s revenues come from taxes, paid by these resource based industries. And that if my fellow employees expect any kind of a pay increase, or job security, the government has to collect taxes from these industries, in order to keep the services going.
You have hit the nail on the head as to why public sector employees should not be allowed to unionize. In the private sector, even when management and unionized workers are fighting, the underlying common link between them is that the company must have revenues sufficient enough to pay for the wages and benefits the unionized workers want. Thus, the workers need to be productive to produce that revenue. Public sector employees are paid with tax dollars that are not connected to their productivity so there is no incentive to do more than the least amount required to keep their job. Now, I have known public sector employees who do a wonderful job and are truly dedicated. Unfortunately that is not so in the majority of cases.
Socialists more likely to support socialism. Who would have guessed?
Wt’s you definition of socialism?
“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.”
Other key drivers (probably more “key”) (and also mentioned by others here) are overly good pay and benefits, near-impossibility of getting fired, and hiring decisions made by eco-activists.
“Some people are born with a higher intrinsic need to serve the public.”
We call them “totalitarians” for short.
Helly says “We call them totalitarians…”
No, WE do not. You call them that. There is no “we”.
Those people that actually do serve the public (and not by mere direction) I call “charitable”.
They’re paid to do a job.
That’s not charity.
As in, “To Serve Man”?
You have entered another dimension.
Baloney! The few public servants we have are busing doing their job–to do the peoples’ will. The rat bags and egotists public employees are not servants, they are parasites infesting big government doing their personal will for their personal gain, not the job they were hired to do. This is why we need to shrink government by half, 3/4, who knows how much; but shrink it we must.
Leonard Lane writes “This is why we need to shrink government by half, 3/4, who knows how much; but shrink it we must.”
There is no “we”. Do you have any specific ideas on how you can start reducing government? If not, then multiplying it by 300 million still produces nothing. If you do have ideas, then multiplying can produce substantial change. But you are asking a beast to shrink itself. Good luck with that.
Outside of the military, small portions of the FBI, and the courts, it can all be gotten rid of.
Riiight. ‘Government of the the people, by the people, and for the people’, for a population that is defined by 1906? It’s already functioning at the government/population level of 1956–that’s how many Obama has either fired or not filled–but it’s still filled with Homeland Security, Defense, and Climate Change nerds, nothing else it seems. Obama has shrunk government by 1/3 of what Bush had. And you think that’s an advantage?
Shrinking government is not the issue. It’s simplistic.
Well, they do have insider knowledge of the existing and potential gravy train and the procedures to milk it.
And the real problem is that the smarties have no clue how the federal monetary system works so they don’t know how to change it.
“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.”
Translation: They are good little collectivists who suffer from the Messiah complex.
In other news, hammers are attracted to nails.
Dare I suggest that those in the private sector are actually working? And would catch holy hell if they wasted time turning crap on and off all the time?
Honestly.
I run from one catastrophe to another basically from start to end of my shift. The phone rings 90 plus times in 12 hours. Sometimes I’ve got 1 phone in each hand, and 2 radios on different channels, and ALL of them are making relevant noises. I skip every break mandated for me by law. I wait, sometimes 10 hours, to take a leak. I never shut the truck off. I’m WORKING! How do these guys have enough time to be so bored that they make up pointless and ineffective sustainability crap to keep themselves busy during working hours? Exactly how little is expected from them that they have time to actually do this stuff?
In title, “public servants” should be in quotes. I doubt real public servants like police and fire fighters buy into this.
I’m a public employee. But I’m just one of the peed-ons. Many of my coworkers are very connected to nature. Like me they believe that all this “California-style” going Green is BS. But I doubt the study would consider them to be environmentally correct. They love to hunt and fish.
I was about to ask how many volunteer for organisations that actually do something?
I haven’t volunteered for a lot but organisations that provide first aid, service to the poor or emergency service volunteers do seem to have more people from blue collar jobs in private industry than public servants.
All for show maybe?
Great photo of the elusive Hanson in his
Natural habitat.
An effin’ Enviro-Aristocrat.
Onr thing that may also be relevant is the some of the public servants don’t have a lot do to so eco activism fills up their working day! I know that some of them do have jobs that take all the time but there are a lot of chair warmers too than don’t have much to do! No offence is intended to anyone but if the cap fits………………
Personally I don’t think they should cuff a guy when they’re taking him to the psych unit.
Studies show that researchers have revealed that there are findings of compelling, if not preliminary, evidence of disturbing data yet to be analysed which nonetheless point to the conclusion that most unversity departments could be shut down with no loss to anyone but themselves.
This post is close enough for government work.
I’m waiting for government at some level to create a “Department of Amish Barn Raisings.”
They’ll need public servants to; create rules and regulations, issue permits, keep records of the rules and regulations and permits; inspect the site for suitability, issue and retrieve and analyze environmental impacts at the barn site, study and approve of the diversity of the barn raisers, approve the menu of the noon meal for the barn raisers and inspect the kitchens and the nutritional value of the menu items, inspect and approve the safety gear and preparations for the barn raising to include 30 hours of training before starting the barn raising, and there’s the support staff at the main office to answer phones, enter data, file and shuffle all paper records and technical support for all computers used by the department.
Or, we could just let the Amish get on with their barn raisings as they have done since the early 1700’s.
So these people who are motivated to public service; should they work for that “Department of Amish Barn Raising” or should they just dive in, grab a hammer and lend a hand? And instead of eco-initiatives (just what the heck is an eco-initiative when it is at home?), can’t they just pick up litter and throw their diet Coke cans in the recycle bin rather than costing me an arm and a leg in taxes, telling me I’m better off for it, and that the world will end tomorrow if we cut staff?
/bizarre rant. I’m out of my usual 1 or 2-liner comments when it comes to the usefulness of most – not all! – government functions
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
Ayn Rand
I wonder if the study have delved into educational backgrounds, ie. what percentage of these public spirited individuals have any grounding in the scientific method?
I think we know that they did not ask. The science is settled. Ha!
Trying to make a virtue out of justifying political correctness.
Complete BS in its purest and most unadulterated form.