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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the civil service doesn’t worry about their employer going bankrupt and thus doesn’t care how destructive their policies are to everyone outside the civil service. so what if a million people are thrown out of work to “save” the burrowing owl, so long as no civil servants are harmed in the process.
PhD from ASU and post doc at UGa.
This makes me sad.
Our tax dollars at work — Instead of performing the work (for the public) they are hired to do, government employees can instead spending their working hours on things they personally feel are important to them.
I hate this study. What if I turn out lights for entirely financial reasons?
I didn’t read the article until it was 136 comments in so this may have been said already. I think they have the causal relationship wrong. Instead of
“Public servants are more likely to become eco-activists”
It should read
Eco-activists are more likely to become public servants
Then you get into like attracting like which follows with the herd mentality. Ultimately the only thing that collapses it is eventually you run out of other people’s money.
Cheers
It is too easy to be generous with money that is not your own. In fact one of the roots of our current over-reach by government, including funding “science” that is designed far more to advance socialist ideology than to advance honest science inquiry. It is no coincidence that solutions supported by both environmentalist and government bureaucrats all converge at the same teleological point: increased government, decreased liberty and prosperity.
One of the roots a wasteful, foolish, intrusive, thuggish, and sometimes tyrannous government is the ease with which it can create almost unlimited amounts of money out of thin air. Near-infinite money buys near-infinite government, and a bureaucracy that is generously funded can entertain an open-ended dream about how to expand its realm.
Every day more people are coming to the judgment that a carefully organized effort to repair the constitution via the States’ power to propose and ratify amendments poses less risk to our liberty and prosperity than the present trajectory of the federal government and especially the federal bureaucracy whose self-published rules carry the weight of law.
The first order of business of an Article V Convention must be to limit government’s ability to create and spend near-infinite amounts of money.
So if I am lobbying and demonstrating to encourage actions that will increase funding for my “empire”, increase my job security, and possibly get me a better raise, is that noble or materialistic? “They have a desire to help others and serve society.” As the Church lady would say, ‘Weeellll Isn’t that convenient?’ What you are lobbying for helps your finances, but is it really serving others? There are two sides to every story, the government has its reasons for doing what it does, and even though NOT doing some eco-friendly things hurts some people’s pocket book (like James Hansen), it helps the quality of life of others. There has yet to be a demonstration in favor of some action no one has ever thought of. But our government doesn’t operate by doing whats best for the environment or any one cause without consideration of other consequences, like economic hardships, it has to do whats it thinks is best for the whole. You can disagree, and you can protest, but that doesn’t mean you are right. That is selfish arrogance if you think that.
“… and when I saw what that bull did to that cow, I understood why they called it public service.” – Will Rogers? I think?
There are some public workers, but most are ‘public servants’. See if you can spot which is which.
The “worker” is the contractor. They are the ones that actually do the work. And are not technically employed by the feds.
Test
[Use the Test Thread (see top of page above for link) for all testing. .mod]
In my all-time fav HBO series “Deadwood” there is a character named Woolcot (George Hearst’s geologist) who has this *wonderful* line:
“I am a sinner who does not expect to be forgiven, but I am not a government official.”
Applies well here, I think.
Maybe Lewandowski could do of his famous psychological studies on this.