Changing Jobs, Changing Communities: Sector Transitions and Changes to Volunteer Intensity

• In Event: Governance Transitions, Network Dynamics, and Organizational Adaptation

Abstract

Public and nonprofit sector workers consistently volunteer at higher rates and with greater intensity than their private sector peers. Yet the mechanism behind this association remains an open question with significant implications for public management and civic engagement policy. Does the sector gap in prosocial behavior reflect the self-selection of motivated individuals into mission-driven work, or does the institutional environment of public and nonprofit employment actively shape volunteer behavior? This paper introduces the concept of a prosocial differential—systematic differences in prosocial behaviors that arise from nonmonetary characteristics across jobs—and leverages a first-difference research design to move toward a causal answer.
     Drawing on the econometric strategy of Krueger and Summers (1988), this paper uses within-worker variation among job switchers to isolate the influence of sector of employment on reported volunteering behavior. Specially, it exploits the panel structure of the Current Population Survey (CPS) September Volunteer Supplement from 2002 to 2015 and focuses on workers who switch between the for-profit, nonprofit, and government sectors during this window. This approach removes time-invariant individual characteristics including public service motivation, innate altruism, and stable civic orientation to isolate the change in volunteer hours associated with a sector transition.
     Preliminary estimates suggest that workers who start a new job in the public sector increase their volunteer time by approximately six hours per year relative to workers who change jobs within the for-profit sector. Results do not find an increase in volunteering for those that switch into the nonprofit sector, implying that the high levels of volunteering seen in this sector may be driven by person-level traits. Planned work will disentangle possible drivers including public servants’ increased awareness of community needs, heightened exposure to volunteer opportunities, and workplace culture.
     This research carries practical implications for public and nonprofit management in addition to theoretical implications for scholars. If sector environments causally influence prosocial behavior, then public employment generates civic externalities that extend beyond the direct delivery of government services. Understanding the institutional drivers of this effect (such as increased awareness of community needs, exposure to volunteer opportunities, or workplace norms) can inform managers to better design roles and policymakers to focus on the broader returns to public investment in workforce, Findings also contribute to longstanding scholarship around prosocial behaviors and sector of employment.

Author

• Tiana Marrese, Rutgers University - Newark
  Presenting Author