Job satisfaction in Cascadia: A comparison of British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington civil servants

Abstract

Canada and the USA share a common cultural source in the British Empire, yet within shared democratic traditions, very different political structures, policy processes, and values have been identified. Canada is seen as having a more deferential culture more supportive of government while Americans have been argued to be more individualistic and cynical about the role of government in society. Using a political culture framework, this study examines the degree to which Canadian and U.S. civil servants perceive societal respect for their public sector jobs, and the impact of those perceptions on individual job satisfaction. It is argued that if civil servants feel more valued by society, they are more likely to have higher levels of public service motivation, which then contributes to higher levels of individual job satisfaction. This study employs surveys of Oregon, Washington and British Columbian civil servants conducted in 2011 and 2012 to investigate this relationship. Findings suggest that British Columbian civil servants feel more valued by society when compared to Oregon and Washington civil servants, and these perceptions of positive societal support are associated with higher levels of individual job satisfaction.

Keywords:

• Job satisfaction
• Political culture
• Civil servants
• Canada

Notes

1 For this study 7 point scales (1 = strongly agree to 7 = strongly disagree) are used for the dependent and various independent variables (Pasta, 2009, pp. 2–3). While many statistical tests including F-tests and regression assume continuous/interval/ratio level data, many social scientists have argued that likert style scales can also be used with these procedures. For example, Grace-Martin argues: “At the very least, insist that the item have at least 5 points (7 is better), that the underlying concept be continuous, and that there be some indication that the intervals between points are approximately equal” (Grace-Martin, 2008). Similarly, Long and Freese (2006, p. 421) suggest “The advantage of this approach is that interpretation is simpler, but to take advantage of this simplicity you must make the strong assumption that successive categories of the ordinal independent variable are equally spaced”. The 7-point scales used in this study the intervals between points are indeed equally spaced.