Does publicness matter in job satisfaction? A three-dimensional analysis of publicness

Public management scholars have argued that public and private organizations are essentially different and such differences will generate different outcomes in various aspects, such as performance and work-related attitudes. Empirical evidence, however, is not consistent. We investigate how the characteristics of public organizations that distinguish them from private counterparts are associated with work attitudes of employees. We measured three dimensions of publicness―ownership, funding, and control―and tested the association of each dimension of publicness with job satisfaction of managers. Data were collected from a sample of 231 middle-level managers from 129 universities in Korea, being analyzed through OLS regressions and HLM methods. The results show that three dimensions of publicness are independently linked to job satisfaction of managers. Public ownership and the level of control were negatively associated with job satisfaction of managers, but financial dependence on public sources was not significantly related to it.