Who wants to work in bureaucracy? Career intentions of post-millennial students

Abstract

This article investigates who wants, or does not want to work in Russian public administration, and why. A majority of Russians believe that public servants are concerned with improving their personal well-being rather than serving the public interest. Understanding working sector choices is thus the first step to attract talent into the civil service. We study public employment intention among a group of students of public administration in two elite Moscow universities who are relatively early undergraduates. Parents working in the civil service are the most important public sector career motivators of students in Russia, more important than positive perceptions of public sector compensation and its impact on society. Our findings imply that early-stage career plans are shaped outside university lecture rooms. We conclude that teaching public administration in Russia will have to focus on drawing a line between behavior that falls below standards of the profession and efforts to contribute to the well-being of citizens.

Keywords

Public sector employment motivation career preferences post-millennials Russia unethical behavior

Introduction

Our knowledge on educational and vocational choices spreads across a century of education and economic sciences, applied psychology, and behavioral public administration. Person–job fit theories (Day and Schleicher, 2012; Holland, 1959; Kristof-Brown et al., 2016; Parson, 1909; Schneider, 1987 ) state that people will self-select into the vocation or work sector that matches their personal interests and abilities best—because a good fit is likely to satisfy basic psychological needs, such as mastering a task (Roberts et al., 2007; Ryan and Deci, 2017). Empirical research supports this notion (Humburg, 2017; Le, Robbins and Westrick, 2014). But not every high school student takes an O*Net test, a prominent vocational interest profiler sponsored by the United States Department of Labor, before choosing a college or profession. Family plays an important role in career decision making (Fouad et al., 2016). A young person’s self-confidence in mastering a subject or profession (Will I succeed in performing this job?), his or her self-concept and identities, are of further relevance for college and career choices (Eccles, 2009; Hartung et al., 2010). Besides, people vary in their “perception whether a given career will bring about valued outcomes” (Wang and Wanberg, 2017: 550), such as income (Wilkinson, 1966), prestige and power. Social cognitive theories suggest that people choose careers consistent with these perceptions (Bandura, 2001).

We research a particular working sector choice: why do people exhibit interest in a civil service career? A global perspective on public administration requires a long look at the huge Russian civil service and its prospective workforce. Russia displays a typical transitional trajectory, namely the “tension between home-grown solutions and the influence of international practice” (Barabashev and Straussman, 2007). Most “elites understand the need to transform the Soviet political bureaucracy,” but “there was no agreement on what a modern Russian public service should look like” (Barabashev and Straussman, 2007). Today, “more than 50 [percent] of Russians assume that ‘people in power’ are concerned only with their own material wellbeing and careers” (Sanina and Kutergina, 2017). Understanding working sector choices is the first step to attracting talent into the civil service. We attempt to build an understanding of vocational choice in Russia, and how it is affected by parental socialization compared to different attitudinal factors. Our research questions are:

What share of students in Russia intend to work in the public sector upon graduation?

To what extent do parental socialization, different job motivators, attitudinal factors and perceptions predict public sector employment intentions?

Are extrinsic job motivators more powerful in predicting career intentions than intrinsic motivators?

In the section following, we develop our theoretical framework. We discuss why motivations for a civil service career in Russia may differ from those in Northern America, Europe or Asia. We derive hypotheses that we test empirically. Our Method section explains our sample, measurements and the approach used for analysis. It should be pointed out that our study refers to a group of students who are relatively early undergraduates. Results from regression analysis are then presented. After a discussion of our study findings, we end with our conclusions and the perceived limitations of our study.

Theoretical framework

Why do people state an intention for a civil service career? A complex mix of motives, each in itself multifaceted, drives human behavior (Vandenabeele and van Loon, 2015: 369). Goals, culture, prior experiences, socialization, internalization and identification (Vandenabeele, 2008), the outlook for obtaining rewards, guilt and honor, or the desire to avoid punishment antecede the multiple motivational bases of human behavior. Accordingly, we have a broad range of aspects drawing individuals to work in the public sector.

Fishbein and Ajzen’s (1975: 289–302) theory of reasoned action states that a behavioral intention, that is, a person’s subjective probability that she will perform some behavior, results from two sources: a person’s attitude toward the behavior, and the willingness to comply with perceived expectation of relevant others whether or not she should perform the behavior. The former, attitudinal component is based on beliefs. A person will hold various beliefs toward an object, each assigning an attribute such as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to it. Beliefs also vary in terms of their strength, that is, the degree to which a person is certain (or uncertain) about an object-attribute link. An attitude results from a person’s evaluation of the 5–9 most important, salient beliefs toward the object. Developmental and educational psychology research added “[e]xpectations for success, confidence in one’s abilities to succeed” and the idea of self-efficacy as “mediators of behavioral choice” into the conceptual framework for understanding occupational choice: “People are much more likely to select those tasks for which they have high expectations for success and a high sense of personal efficacy” (Eccles, 2009: 81). Social cognitive career theory (Bandura, 1986) “posits that self-efficacy, outcome expectation and interests predict students’ career choices” (Le et al., 2014: 917). Motivation-related publications have focused on the role of individual differences, in terms of personality traits and motives, on formation of behavioral intentions (van Witteloostuijn et al., 2017: in a public sector context, for example).

Here, we introduce a general model of occupational preference formation among students of public administration (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

A general model of public sector employment intention.

Our model posits that the intention to work in the public sector results from parents in civil service (the perceived expectations from relevant others), and a cost-benefit analysis reflecting expected utility from four benefits of public sector employment: i. job security, ii. public sector compensation (remuneration and fringe benefits), iii. social impact (the opportunity to serve the public interest), and iv. achievement motivation (to affect and implement public policies). Valuation for each potential benefit positively links to expected utility and thus behavioral intention. We implicitly assume that all four factors equally contribute to combined expected utility function because we lack convincing theoretical arguments and empirical evidence to factor this differently. We also assume that three types of motivation underlie and navigate the cost–benefit calculation: prosocial motivation; security motivation and achievement motivation (ambition). There is also the underlying trust in bureaucracy (the willingness to comply with systemic job expectations).

Hypotheses

Parents in civil service

Parents serve as the most influential role models for their children (Fouad et al., 2016) and their career plans. Parents raise, socialize and intentionally nudge their children into vocational directions and, in a more subtle and unintentional manner, their occupations exemplify career paths. Parents transmit information about working conditions and provide personal contacts (Lewis and Frank, 2002: 400). We argue that in Russia, parental socialization gives a pivotal impetus to reported job intentions, both by transmitting information about working conditions and (importantly) by providing personal contacts that facilitate opportunities to enter a given career path. Hypothesis 1 thus states that

Hypothesis 1: A student whose parents work in civil service is more likely to state an interest in the public sector employment upon graduation.

Public sector compensation

Expectancy value theory states that people prefer to work for the sector they think will provide them with more of the rewards they consider most important (Ryan and Deci, 2017: 349). In the US, students have been highly sensitive about pay throughout the past 50 years (Braunstein and Haines, 1968; Lewis and Frank, 2002; McGinnis and Ng, 2016). A high salary similarly ranks second among contemporary college students in Asia on a list of 15 job motivators (Ko and Jun, 2015). Those “who place a higher priority on pay should prefer whichever sector they think will pay them the most”; however, both job searchers and scholars “probably disagree as to which sector this is” (Lewis and Frank, 2002). In the US, the wage gap between private and public sector compensation is an estimated 15 percent (Llorens, 2015: 476). In Russia, the estimated private-public sector wage gap is much higher; the salary of an average public sector worker has fluctuated between 50 and 85 percent of the wage of an average industrial worker over the past two decades (Gimpelson and Lukiyanova, 2009). But due to recently implemented pay-for-performance schemes, wages for public administration positions (excluding public health, education and law enforcement) may even exceed average wages in the rest of the economy by 20 percent (Gimpelson, Lukiyanova and Sharunina, 2015).

Given this dynamic over time, we argue that it is not the estimated mean wage gap that determines working sector choices of students but their individual perception of public sector compensation schemes.

First, frequent job turnover is common for many Russian employees, and often only multiple private sector employments jointly add up to an acceptable level of income. Public employment offers a rather low, but relatively secure and stable income. We hypothesize that students who perceive civil service employment as a source of stable and secure income are more likely to state public sector intentions compared to students who do not share this perception.

Hypothesis 2a: A student who perceives civil service employment as a source of stable and secure income is likely to state an intention to work in the public sector upon graduation.

Second, historically strong nonwage benefits and relative job security in the public sector have compensated for wage gaps (Llorens, 2015). Hypothesis 2b states that students who perceive civil service employment as a source of social benefits, such as health care and pension schemes, are more likely to state public sector intentions compared to students who do not share this perception.

Hypothesis 2b: A student who perceives public sector employment as a source for social benefits is likely to state the intention to work in the public sector upon graduation.

Social impact of public employment

Altruism has been a key variable of interest in the literature of public sector choice. The seminal public service motivation (PSM) paradigm of Perry and Wise (1990) reasons that people who exhibit high levels of altruism self-select into the public sector. Survey and experimental studies robustly confirm this statement. Employees in the public sector self-report a higher level of altruism compared to their counterparts in the business sector (Bullock, Stritch and Rainey, 2015). But this may result from self-sorting or from compliance with organizational norms, missions and code-of-ethics; public service motivation may be a stable personality trait (Vogel and Kroll, 2016) or a dynamic state induced by on-the-public-job socialization (Kjeldsen and Jacobsen, 2013). Among college students the link between self-reported prosocial motivation and the desire to work in nonprofit sectors has been studied in a wide range of administrative contexts and cultures, such as Northern America (Boyd et al.: 2017; Choi and Chung, 2017; Clerkin and Coggburn, 2012; Lewis and Frank, 2002; Ng and Sears, 2015; Perry, 1997; Rose, 2010), Latin America (Sanabria-Pulido, 2017), Europe (Belle, 2015; Nezhina and Barabashev, 2017; Vandenabeele, 2008; Winter and Thaler, 2016), and Asia (Bangcheng et al., 2011; Banuri and Keefer, 2016; Ko and Jun, 2015). This extensive research indicates that the link between prosocial motivation and career interests varies between administrative contexts. In the US, the most-researched context, evidence is mixed: US-Americans who value jobs that are useful for society and that allow someone to help other people are more likely to desire a job in civil service; however, among college graduates in the US population, there is no such relationship (Lewis and Frank, 2002). Instead, students with high levels of PSM are likely to self-select into jobs in the nonprofit sector rather than into public employment (Bright, 2016; Rose, 2010). A potential explanation is that prosocial motivation splits into an emotional and a rational part. People who score high on rational aspects of PSM, such as attraction to policy making, are likely to self-select into public sector jobs; people who score high on the affective dimensions, such as self-sacrifice, self-select into nonprofit employment (Rose, 2010). For example, US students who exhibit high levels of self-sacrifice are more likely to state an intention to work in the public or nonprofit sector, whereas the other three dimensions of PSM have no impact on sector intention (Clerkin and Coggburn, 2012). The power that PSM, or dimensions of it, have in predicting career intention and choice reportedly is relatively small compared to extrinsic job motivators, and gender; or example, Bright (2016) finds that a one-unit increase in PSM makes it 1.03 times more likely that a student from his sample prefers a civil service career, compared to a 2.7 times increase for female compared to male students. Also, in Scandinavia, altruism does not make a difference for work sector choice (Kjeldsen and Jacobsen, 2013). For East Asia, empirical findings are mixed as well: students in Singapore and South Korea who value the chance to benefit society are likely to state their interest in public sector jobs; in contrast, in China, there is no such an effect (Ko and Jun, 2015).

For Russia, little empirical evidence on job motivators is available: only recently a study from Nezhina and Barabashev (2017) finds that Russian Masters in Public Administration (MPA) students who self-report high levels of prosocial motivation are more likely to state the intention to work in government compared to those who seek for prestige rather than helping others. We assume that a similar effect exists among undergraduate students. We hypothesize that students who perceive civil service as an opportunity to benefit society, either by serving one’s country (patriotism) or changing something in society, are likely state their intention to work in government or civil service jobs upon graduation. We further hypothesize that helping people is an additional normative job motivator.

Hypothesis 3a: A student to whom civil service is an opportunity to benefit society is likely to state the intention to work in the government or civil service upon graduation.

Hypothesis 3b: A student to whom civil service is an opportunity to serve the country (patriotism) is likely to state the intention to work in the government or civil service upon graduation.

Hypothesis 3c: A student who perceives public employment as a chance to help others is likely to state the intention to work in the government or civil service upon graduation.

Attitudes on unethical behavior

Negative self-selection theory proclaims that corrupt people self-select into the public sector. For example, in a laboratory setting, college students and nurses in Bangalore, India, who cheated on a dice-game, were more likely to prefer public sector employment (Hanna and Wang, 2017).

Historically the Russian administrative context has been influenced both by the Soviet bureaucratic legacy and the supersonic transformation from central planning to a market economy in the early 1990s. The ideological turn in the 1990s nullified old ethical norms but failed to establish new moral standards. Russia ranks 131th place (out of 176) in Transparency International’s perceived corruption index, far behind other Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICs) countries such as India and China (both ranked 79th place). There is a widespread perception of top-level (Public Opinion, 2013; Rimskii, 2013), and everyday street-level corruption (Reisinger, Zaloznaya and Claypool, 2017). In such a context one might expect that people who accept gaining some extra rewards at the expense of community members either through bribery or lazy work show an interest in public sector employment.

We observe that the tone-from-the-top in Russia has been changing, however. Russia saw several rounds of public anti-corruption campaigns over the last years. Campaigning reached a new level when in 2017 the then-minister of economic affairs was publicly ousted in a bribery scandal and sentenced to eight years in a prison colony. As in China, these anti-corruption campaigns seek to win public support as a source of political legitimacy (Zhu, Huang and Zhang, 2017) by signaling a zero-tolerance policy regarding non-ethical behavior in the civil service.

To solve a given problem in Russia it has been very common to circumvent centralized rules and laws by developing creative workarounds. Historically, laws have been considered as unfair because their enforcement tends to be biased toward normal people, while leaving loopholes for people with or in power; this persistent perception is fueled by limited public trust in judicial independence. However, the new tone-from-the top is that rule-bending is not tolerated, and that civil servants will have to be aware of inappropriate behavior that falls below officially proclaimed ethical and professional standards. We argue these signals have changed the incentive structure for prospective job applicants: students who deviate from organizational norms (such as codes of conduct and standard operating procedures), for reasons such as convenience, or favoring friends, may expect less valued rewards from a civil service career. Our argument is supported by recent experimental evidence: subjects in an experimental study in Moscow, Russia, who cheated on the same dice-game task that was conducted in India, are less likely to state their intention for government jobs (Gans-Morse et al., 2017). We thus hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 4a: A student who tolerates circumventing organizational procedures is less likely to state the intention to work in the public sector upon graduation.

Hypothesis 4b: A student who states a positive attitude toward deviating from organizational norms for supporting his or her personal network is less likely to state the intention to work in the public sector upon graduation.

Hypothesis 4c: A student who states a positive attitude toward offering and accepting bribes in public service delivery is less likely to state the intention to work in the civil service.

Ambition

Talent and ambition have been further dominant variables of interest regarding career choices. Economic models assume that people differ in their managerial ability and public service motivation, but the return for managerial ability is assumed to always be higher in the private sector (Delfgaauw and Dur, 2010). This implies that for-profit organizations skim the cream of the most talented managers, leaving the more altruistic and risk-averse people to public service. This reasoning may claim some empirical support: For example, a survey study from Germany finds that “public sector employees are significantly more altruistic [but] lazy than observationally equivalent private sector employees” (Dur and Zoutenbier, 2014). And high school and college students in the US preferred federal government jobs for the security criterion (Braunstein and Haines, 1968), whereas business jobs were preferred for advancement and salary. The job motivator advancement correlates with an individual’s achievement motivation, which is an underlying attitudinal factor behind sensitivity for pay (McClelland, 1965; McGinnis and Ng, 2016). We argue that students with a strong achievement motivation prefer private sector jobs over public sector, and hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 5: A student who has a strong achievement motivation is unlikely to state the intention to work in the civil service upon graduation.

Public trust in bureaucracy

The public perception of civil service adds to the attitudes a job searcher holds about public sector employment (Ko and Jun, 2015; Lewis and Frank, 2002; Rose, 2010). Public perceptions vary among generations such as the baby boomers, gen x and millennials; by countries; and over the maturity of a bureaucratic system. In the US, some birth cohorts “grew up in an era when bureaucrat bashing and cynical attitudes toward government prevail” (Lewis and Frank, 2002). In some Asian countries, government jobs enjoy a better public standing: Singapore and South Korea typically score top in global rankings of government effectiveness; both countries witness severe competition for public sector vacancies among college graduates. In China, people hold more negative perceptions because corruption is more widespread, and college graduates shy away from a civil service career as they perceive public servants as acting incompetently (Ko and Jun, 2015).

In Russia, on the one hand, public trust in government and public administration has significantly improved over the last 15 years alongside increasing living standards of a growing economic middle class, from an all-time low in the mid-and late 1990s. Trust in the country’s president and its government draws MPA students into civil service employment (Nezhina and Barabashev: 2017); there is a rally around-the-flag effect. Stable trust in the president, on the other hand, does not fully transmit to civil servants in general: “more than 50 [percent] of Russians assume that “people in power” are concerned only with their own material wellbeing and careers” (Sanina and Kutergina, 2017). We argue that personal experiences with non-professional or unethical behavior of civil servants fuel negative perceptions about the public sector in general. We hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 6: A student who perceives civil servants as purely self-oriented is less likely to state the intention to work in the public sector upon graduation.

Method

A binary logistic regression model was used to test our hypotheses empirically. In Spring 2016 we surveyed students enrolled in public administration educational programs at two large and prestigious universities in Moscow, Russia. Sampling students, rather than civil servants, gives us the opportunity to expand our understanding of the career motivations of people with no or very limited exposure to organizational norms and missions. At the same time, students enrolled in public administration programs in Russia are the most meaningful proxy for future civil servants, and we expect more nuanced insights on future public officials than if we sampled across all degrees.

Three-hundred-and-eighteen second-year undergraduate students were asked to participate in the study by answering a paper-based questionnaire. Students were informed that their participation was fully voluntary and anonymous, and that they could skip any question in the questionnaire. We received 283 useable responses, which effectively is an 89-percent response rate. Although not a random sample, the demographic makeup of our sample of convenience is representative (in terms of age and gender) of both universities’ second-year undergraduate population across all subjects.

The post-millennial student

The average undergraduate in our sample is about 19 years old; our study subjects thus belong to the post-millennials, the cohort that was born between 1996 and 2014. We assume that post-millennials differ from previous generations, such as the millennials (a cohort that was born between 1980 and 1995), in terms of their work attitudes and career preferences (McGinnis and Ng, 2016). Although millennials “place strong emphasis on material rewards (i.e., the importance of money)” (McGinnis and Ng, 2016), recent sociological research documented that post-millennials in Russia are oriented to the comfort of life more than toward money (Gugueva and Fetisova, 2016; Sokolova and Lobanova [Соколова and Лобанова], 2012).

Dependent variable

Intention to work in the public sector. We asked respondents to finish the following incomplete sentence: “After graduation I plan to…”, and provided nine options:

work in federal government/civil service (26 percent);

work for regional government (for example Moscow City government, Russian regions) (7 percent);

work in science/education sector (2 percent);

open their own business (18 percent);

work in a private sector business firm (18 percent);

continue their studies/earn another academic degree (18 percent);

change their study subject (7 percent);

do not know yet (17 percent); and

others (6 percent).

Options 1 and 2 were indicative of respondents who intend to start a career in civil service; responses were recoded as 1 = public sector intention (33 percent), whereas options 3–9 indicated that a respondent intends to take a career outside the public sector, and were recoded 0 = no public sector job intention (67 percent).

Independent variables

Parents in civil service. Respondents were asked to indicate whether their parents are working in civil service (1 = yes, 22 percent; 0 = if otherwise, 78 percent).

Compensation perceptions. We asked respondents to judge the following two statements as indicative of their perception of public sector compensation (from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree):

public administration to me means stable, increasing income (mean value = 3.5); and

public administration offers an opportunity to receive social benefits (mean value = 3.4).

Social impact of public employment. The survey asked respondents to state to what extent they agree or disagree with the following three statements (from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) as indicative of their perception of the impact of public employment on society:

to me, public employment offers an opportunity to help people (sample mean value = 3.9);

public employment is patriotic service to the motherland (mean value = 3.6); and

public employment is an opportunity to change something in society and the world (mean value = 4.2).

Attitudes on unethical behavior. Respondents were asked to state to what extent they agree or disagree with the following four statements (from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree), as indicative of their attitudes toward behavior that may be fall below ethical and professional standards:

deviating from the usual procedure is fine, as long as no one will be harmed (mean value = 3.5);

if you can help a friend, it is fine to deviate from the regular procedure (mean value = 3.7);

if processing documents is really complicated, civil servants should receive some extra money from the customer (mean value = 2.8); and

if civil servants receive a low salary, it is okay if they receive additional income from help or work (mean value = 2.3).

Ambition. This was measured using two survey items. Subjects were asked to state how important they consider the following characteristics as indicative of their level of achievement motivation (from 1 = not important to 5 = very important):

having a clear goal in life (mean value = 4.7); and

achieving a goal (mean value = 4.4).

Trust in civil servants. We asked respondents to evaluate the following statement as indicative of their perception of civil servants’ commitment to the public interest:

Civil servants want to solve their own problems, not help others (mean value = 3.5).

Results

The average undergraduate in our sample is female (59.7 percent) and about 19 years old (Table 1). One out of three students in our sample intends to work in federal or regional civil service upon graduation.

Table 1.

Demographic makeup of the sample.

Variable	Overall	University One	University Two
Female	59.7 percent	56.0 percent	70.3 percent
Age, mean value	19.5 years	19.6 years	19.4 years

Each independent variable was regressed on all of the other independent variables to obtain variance inflation factor (VIF) scores and detect eventually high multicollinearity. VIF scores ranged from 1.61 to 1.08, well below a commonly accepted threshold of 2.5 or higher. None of the independent variables are significantly correlated beyond 0.38; this also indicates that multicollinearity is not a concern in our dataset. As bivariate statistics, we calculated Cramer’s V for pairs of factor variables, and point-biserial correlation coefficients for combinations of continuous and factor variables. Table 2 displays descriptions and correlation matrix for all variables.

Table 2.

Description and correlation matrix for all variables.

Variable description	Mean	SD	Min	Max	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16
Intention to work in the public sector (1=yes, 0=otherwise)	0.33	0.47	0	1	-
Age, in years	19.51	0.81	17	23	-0.07	-
University	1.26	0.44	1	2	-0.08	0.09	-
gender (female=1, male=0)	0.60	0.49	0	1	0.01	0.09	0.14	-
Parents in civil service (1=yes; 0=no)	0.22	0.42	0	1	0.20	0.00	-0.02	0.04	-
To me public administration means stable, increasing income	3.49	1.13	1	5	0.11	-0.03	0.24	0.11	0.13	-
Public employment offers an opportunity to receive social benefits	3.37	1.21	1	5	0.15	-0.01	0.11	0.16	0.05	0.21	-
Public employment is an opportunity to change something in society and the world	4.16	1.08	1	5	0.15	-0.07	0.59	0.04	0.05	0.10	0.13	-
Public employment is patriotic service to the motherland	3.59	1.27	1	5	0.21	-0.03	0.10	0.22	0.12	0.16	0.16	0.21	-
Public employment is an opportunity to help people	3.92	1.00	1	5	0.14	-0.02	0.09	0.13	0.14	0.12	0.15	0.29	0.33	-
Having a clear goal in life is important to me	4.70	0.62	1	5	0.12	-0.17	0.08	0.11	0.17	0.15	0.16	0.18	0.17	0.15	-
Achieving a goal is important to me	4.40	0.63	1	5	0.05	-0.10	0.10	0.21	0.14	0.15	0.11	0.16	0.14	0.21	0.38	-
Civil servants want to solve their own problems, but not to help others	3.55	1.06	1	5	0.17	-0.03	0.08	0.09	0.19	0.12	0.13	0.11	0.15	0.14	0.13	0.14	-
Deviating from the usual procedure is alright, unless nobody gets harmed	3.55	1.18	1	5	0.07	-0.03	0.17	0.20	0.11	0.14	0.16	0.12	0.14	0.16	0.11	0.13	0.14	-
Benefiting a friend justifies circumventing the regular procedure	3.66	1.58	1	5	0.08	-0.09	0.20	0.13	0.09	0.12	0.15	0.12	0.13	0.11	0.19	0.15	0.11	0.22	-
Handling of complicated documents justifies extra money from the customer	2.78	1.26	1	5	0.06	0.14	0.19	0.06	0.15	0.20	0.12	0.12	0.12	0.12	0.14	0.14	0.15	0.11	0.14	-
Low salary of public officials justifies additional earning	2.33	1.24	1	5	0.16	0.10	0.14	0.16	0.07	0.16	0.11	0.16	0.11	0.24	0.16	0.14	0.18	0.17	0.13	0.26

Parents

Hypothesis 1 states that a student whose parents work in civil service is more likely to state an interest in public sector employment upon graduation. We find that a student from a family of civil servants is almost three times more likely to express her interest in becoming a civil servant than a student with a non-civil service background (odds ratio = 2.71, p < 0.01; Table 3), supporting Hypothesis 1.

Table 3.

Binary logistic regression results.

Dependent variable: Intention to work in the public sector (1=yes, 0=otherwise)Independent variables	Odds ratio	Robust standard error	p, a level of significance
Age, in years	1.206	0.222	0.308
Gender: female	1.041	0.318	0.893
University	0.622	0.23	0.199
Parents in civil service	2.714	0.928	0.004***
To me public administration means stable, increasing income	1.204	1.684	0.185
Public administration offers an opportunity to receive social benefits. 1=strongly disagree	(base category)
2=rather disagree	2.578	1.784	0.171
3=neutral	2.513	1.734	0.182
4=rather agree	4.28	2.863	0.03**
5= strongly agree	3.361	2.298	0.076*
Public employment is an opportunity to change something in society and the world. 1=strongly disagree	(base category)
2=rather disagree	2.353	2.629	0.444
3=neutral	4.251	4.151	0.138
4=rather agree	4.31	4.091	0.124
5= strongly agree	7.381	7.036	0.036**
Public employment is patriotic service to the motherland. 1=strongly disagree	(base category)
2=rather disagree	0.869	0.745	0.87
3=neutral	3.064	2.29	0.134
4=rather agree	2.932	2.109	0.135
5= strongly agree	3.783	3.014	0.095*
Public employment is an opportunity to help people (from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree)	0.893	0.19	0.595
Having a clear goal in life (from 1=not important to 5=very important)	0.7	0.199	0.187
Achieving a goal (from 1=not important to 5=very important)	1.132	0.31	0.651
Civil servants want to solve their own problems, but not to help others (from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree)	1.075	0.154	0.613
Deviating from the usual procedure is alright, unless nobody gets harmed. 1=strongly disagree	(base category)
2=rather disagree	2.6	2.05	0.226
3=neutral	4.655	3.524	0.042**
4=rather agree	4.225	3.122	0.051*
5= strongly agree	4.97	3.672	0.03**
Benefiting a friend justifies circumventing the regular procedure	0.815	0.112	0.139
Handling of complicated documents justifies extra money from the customer	1.132	0.157	0.37
Low salary of public officials justifies additional earning	1	0.138	0.942
Constant	0	0.001	0.051*
Observations	284
Pseudo-R2	0.133

Notes. Odds ratios are indicative of effect sizes. An odds ratio >1 (<1) indicates a positive (negative) impact of the variable under investigation on the dependent variable. P-values are indicative of the significance of the potential effect. P-values <.10 (>.10) indicate that is it likely (unlikely) that the variable under investigation has an impact on the dependent variable. *p≤.1. **p≤.05. ***p≤.01. Estimates for each category of factor variables are displayed in case the variable has a significant impact.

Compensation perception

Hypothesis 2a states that students who perceive civil service employment as a source of stable and secure income are more likely to state public sector intentions compared to students who do not share this perception. Hypothesis 2a is not supported; we find no significant differences in public sector intention across levels of compensation perception. Hypothesis 2b states that students who perceive civil service employment as a source of social benefits, such as health care and pension schemes, are more likely to state public sector intentions compared to students who do not share this perception. Hypothesis 2b is partly supported: for a student who perceives public employment as a source of social benefits, the odds of stating public sector intention is 4.28 times (p < 0.05) larger than the odds for a student who absolutely disagrees with this view. For the highest response category, we found that the odds is 3.36 times higher (p < 0.1) compared to the base category.

Attitudes on the social impact of public employment

Hypothesis 3a states that students who perceive public employment as an opportunity to change something in society are likely to express an intention to work in the civil service upon graduation, whereas Hypothesis 3b states that students who perceive public employment as a patriotic commitment are more likely to do so. Hypothesis 3c states that students who perceive civil service as chance to help others are likely to plan a public service career. The odds ratios indicate that as perceptions of changing something in society through civil service increases, the propensity for stating a public sector employment intention also increases, supporting Hypothesis 3a. For a student who strongly agrees with the perception that civil service means changing something in society, the odds of stating public sector intention is 7.38 times larger (p < 0.05) than the odds for a student who totally disagrees with this statement. For all other response categories we found no significant differences in public sector intentions compared to the base category. And we find no support for our theoretical expectations that the perceived chance to serve their country (patriotism, H3b) and to help others (H3c) motivates students to strive for a public sector career.

Attitudes on bribery and rule-bending

Hypotheses 4a and 4b state that a student who tolerates “victimless” rule-bending is less likely to state an intention to work in the public sector upon graduation. Hypothesis 4c states that a student who appreciates bribery under certain conditions is less likely to state an intention to work in the civil service. Two of the three hypotheses are not supported. We found no significant differences in public sector employment intention across attitudes toward rule-bending in order to support friends (H4b), and corruption (H4c). The results support hypothesis H4a: for a student who holds positive perceptions about “victimless” rule-bending, i.e., under the assumption that no one is harmed, the odds of stating public sector intention is 4.97 times larger (p < 0.05) than the odds for a student who disagrees with this behavior.

Hypothesis 5 states that students who self-report strong ambitions, as indicative of their achievement motivation, are unlikely to state the intention to work in the civil service upon graduation. Estimation results provide no support for this hypothesis. The perception of civil servants’ commitment to the public interest (Hypothesis 6) is found to have no meaningful explanation for career plans of Russian students. Age and gender do also not have a significant impact on public sector intention propensity.

Practical relevance

To demonstrate the practical relevance of our results we calculated adjusted predictions at representative values of the variables of the greatest interest. Table 4 illustrates how slight changes in the family background variable, compensation perceptions, and attitudes to the social impact of public employment affect the career plans of students alongside age and gender.

Table 4.

Illustration of the practical relevance.

	19 years old, female student
Family background	Parents not in civil service	Parents in civil service
Attitudes about the social impact of public administration: “Public employment is a chance to change society”	Neutral	Neutral	Strongly agree
Compensation perception: Public employment offers social benefits	Neutral			Strongly agree
Likelihood of stating “I plan to work in public sector upon graduation”	.194(p≤0.05)	.378(p≤0.002)	.501(p≤0.000)	.567(p≤0.000)

A 19-year-old female student from a civil service family background holding a neutral perception of compensation and the societal impact of civil service intends to work in the public sector upon graduation with a likelihood of 37.8 percent. The chance of an otherwise-comparable 19-year-old female student whose parents do not work in civil service to state public sector intentions is 19.4 percent; the average marginal effect of parents is about 18 percentage points. Consider the same 19-year-old female student from a civil service background but with a strong belief that civil service is a chance to change something in society (instead of a neutral perception); she will state an intention to work in the public sector with a likelihood of 50.1 percent. Consider that the same student switches her compensation perception from neutral to very positive; this will increase the probability by another 7 percentage points from 50 percent to about 57 percent.

Discussion

This study investigates how the vocations of parents, perceptions about bureaucracy, and attitudes toward work-related behaviors, including corruption, affect career intentions of students in public administration programs in Russia. The analysis shows that public sector career preferences result from parents working in civil service, positive perceptions of public sector compensation, the perceived opportunity to change something in society, and a positive attitude toward “victimless” rule-bending, i.e., under the assumption that no one is harmed.

First, parents working in civil service are the most important career motivator of students in Russia, more important than positive perceptions of compensation practices and the impact of public employment on society. This implies that parental socialization via vocational role models is a core causal mechanism that shapes the career plans of post-millennial students. In support of the educational psychology literature, our study finds that parents and their vocational choices play a pivotal role in the career plans of young people (Fouad et al., 2016). Our finding also confirms prior sociological research findings that Russian urban youth are highly sensitive about the job choice of their parents: in a sample of young people aged 12–29, 56.4 percent identified relationships with parents as important factors in their lives. In regard to job choice and career plans choices, 80.4 percent of students reported that they share the views of their parents (Skriptunova and Morozov, 2002). One explanation for strong parental influence in our study is our choice of undergraduate level students (second year, 19 years). At this early age, students are still predisposed to follow their parents’ footsteps.

Second, the perception that public administration offers an opportunity to change something in society is the second most relevant motivator for a student to strive for public sector employment. This finding coincides with a recent study from Nezhina and Barabashev (2017), who found that MPA students in Russia with high prosocial motivation are more likely to self-select into government jobs. In support of existing research on the relationship between public service motivation and working sector choice (Bright, 2016; Clerkin and Coggburn, 2012; Ko and Jun, 2015; Rose, 2010), we find that the normative aspect of prosocial motivation (Perry, 1997) to change something in society positively affects students’ interest in public sector employment, although it is not the most relevant explanation why Russian students pursue public sector careers. Our findings thus corroborate the PSM-paradigm, where people who exhibit high levels of altruism self-select into the public or nonprofit sector (Perry and Wise, 1990).

Third, the extrinsic job motivator of stable and secure income is not a meaningful predictor for public sector career plans of Russian students. This contradicts our theoretical expectations, because a stable and secure future and high salary were found to be the most important job motivators in the US (Lewis and Frank, 2002) and Asia (Ko and Jun, 2015). Our finding suggests that work and salary do not occupy an important place in the motivational structure of students. We offer two explanations, the first being that in Russia children expect their parents to help with money until they finish their bachelor program. This expectation is a legacy from an old Soviet tradition to support children-students. This implies that undergraduate students in Russia are not sensitive about pay simply because they still do not have to be; once students continue their Masters programs, they will become serious about pay. Our second explanation is that Russian post-millennials, the cohort that was born between 1996 and 2014 and to which our study subjects belong, are different from previous generations in term of career expectations (Lunev and Zlotkovskiy, 2014; Institute of Sociology RAS, 2007; Zholudeva and Panarskii, 2013). This explanation is supported by recent sociological survey evidence from Russia: Sokolova and Lobanova [Соколова and Лобанова] (2012) found that post-millennials in Russia are oriented to the comfort of life more than toward money. This cohort intends to enjoy the benefits of life, but demonstrates no aspiration toward producing them. In a similar vein, only 15.7 percent of respondents in a recent survey among post-millennials in Russia reported that work is a sphere of life that they are highly sensitive about (Gugueva and Fetisova, 2016). However, we found that the expectation of social benefits positively affects pursuing a government job. One explanation centers on the relative importance of non-monetary benefits in Russian social history. In Soviet-times privileges and non-monetary entitlements, such as better-than-average medical service and housing, both expressed and contributed to social status (Tikhonova, 2016). One might argue that this collective experience channeled into students’ contemporary reasoning behind sector choice. An additional explanation centers on low salary levels of civil servants in Russia, where the gap between public and private sector wages is significantly higher than in the US. Its seems reasonable to argue that the expected basic salary (without common performance-related bonuses) in the public sector is so low that even a very positive perception is not a powerful predictor for public sector intentions.

Fourth, we find little support for negative self-selection theory, where people with a predisposition for cheating (Hanna and Wang, 2017) and violating public trust (Neshkova and Rosenbaum, 2015) self-select into government jobs. Attitudes toward corruption among civil servants are not meaningful predictors of the career preferences of Russian students. One noteworthy exception is our finding that students who strive for a public service career have a more positive attitude toward circumventing organizational procedures given the assumption that no one is harmed. This finding has to be put into the Russian context: the high number of students predisposed to circumvent established rules (assuming no harm to others) could be explained by the overregulation of administrative processes in Russia. A creative approach offered by bureaucrats often helps in finding ways out of trouble and to achieve a socially valued goal. Alternatively, one could argue that our finding reflects the common perception in Russia that laws and standardized rules are inappropriate guidelines to solve peoples’ real-life problems. As long as no one suffers from creative workarounds, deviating from centralized rules is thus seen even as necessary to survive, and is not perceived as unethical behavior. The findings in our study suggest that students striving for public employment are more attached to this attitude than their peers looking for careers in the business or nonprofit sector.

Conclusion and limitations

Our study contributes to the public administration literature by offering insights on public sector career motivators of students. Our findings suggest that career choices of Russian students arise from interactions of work-related attitudes, perceptions of bureaucracy, and the social influences of relevant others. Our findings further suggest that we should highlight the role of parents in attracting talent into the public sector. When making career choices, students in Russia depend more on their parents’ advice or recommendations than their peers in other countries. Parents working in the civil service are the most influential predictor for a student stating an interest in a public sector career. Our study findings suggest that the intention for a civil service career at around 19 is not an expression of one’s self; i.e., early-stage job choice is not autonomously motivated (Ryan and Deci, 2017: 31). Our results are rather supportive of expectancy-valence cognitive theories, which predict motivation from expected positive psychological outcomes. Our study results imply that young students align their job plans with the career paths of their parents to receive emotional (relatedness) and financial support. It further implies that for early-stage undergraduates a basic-need-supporting family environment is more relevant than an expression of self-identity.

Limitations

Our study has several limitations. Sample selection and composition is the first major limitation. Public administration undergraduates have already pre-selected themselves into a public affairs degree, therefore subjects are more likely to have a predisposition for civil service employment than if we had have sampled across all subjects. However, students enrolled in public administration programs in Russia are the most meaningful proxy for future civil servants. Although generalizability is limited, our study provides valuable insights on the attitudes, perceptions and motivations of Russia’s prospective public sector workforce. All study subjects are around age 19, which does not allow testing for an intervening effect of age on career intentions. The influence of parents may diminish as students gain additional self-efficacy and work-related experience through internships during their studies. Another limitation for generalizability to all Russian students is that our respondents are enrolled in two elite universities in Moscow. Being the political, business and cultural capital of Russia, Moscow offers a wide-range of job opportunities in the private, public and nonprofit sectors, whereas in other parts of Russia the government is often the primary employer. Thus some caution needs to be taken in generalizing the findings to students from other regions of Russia. A second major limitation is that we use single self-reported survey items to measure both the dependent variable and the independent variables (Jakobsen and Jensen, 2015; Podsakoff et al., 2012).

Area for future research

Our findings imply that the career interests of Russian students are mainly formed outside the lecture rooms of public affair departments. We conclude that in Russia, teaching public administration will have to focus on promoting ethical values and decision making, i.e., drawing a line between behavior that falls below standards and efforts to contribute to the well-being of citizens. It is an area for future research to investigate whether applying novel and inspiring teaching methods will have a relevant impact in this endeavor.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This article benefited from the proofreading services offered by the Academic Writing Centre at National Research University Higher School of Economics, in particular Anna Dudetskaya, Kevin Gordon, and David Connoly.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Tim Jäkel

George Alexander Borshchevskiy

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