Attraction to Government Public Service Professions - Predicting This Career Decision

Attracting competent, committed candidates to government public service professions is of ongoing concern to government leaders, recruiters, and citizens. Without employees capable of achieving governments' objectives, acceptable standards in the democratic delivery of public services are difficult to achieve. Traditionally, choosing government public service professions was considered the response to a special calling and to an affinity with employment environments imbued with the public service ethos. With public services now delivered from a multi-sectored environment, the locus of the public service ethos is open to debate. The two main goals of this research were to identify what most strongly predicts the decisions of public and business administration graduate students to enter government public service professions and to assess the public service ethos among a set of career choice predictors from relevant literatures.