Zeger Van Der Wal

Organizational Ethics Across Sectors: Comparing Values and Value Dilemmas Between Government and Business Organizations Zeger Van Der Wal

This study aims to determine what is valued most in public and private sector organizational decision making. Despite the recent attention to the values and norms that guide organizational conduct and the extent to which these values and norms are intermixing and converging between government and business, not much empirical data is available on which values characterize which sector. The research outcomes show that just as some important classical differences emerge, a number of similarities between the public and private sector appear to result in a set of common core organizational values. Furthermore, the data support neither increasing adoption of business values in public sector organizations nor flirtation with public values in the business sector. This result contradicts expectations in the literature on New Public Management and Corporate Social Responsibility, suggesting public?private value intermixing. Value solidity seems the dominant feature in both sectors in the Netherlands. Additional analysis shows that ?publicness,? the extent to which an organization belongs to the public or the private sector, strongly determines value preferences.