Rainey SamplingDesignsAnalyzing 2011

Sampling Designs for Analyzing Publicness: Alternatives and Their Strengths and
Weaknesses
Author(s): Hal G. Rainey
Source: Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory: J-PART , July 2011,
Vol. 21, Supplement 3: Publicness and Organizational Performance: A Special Issue (July
2011), pp. i321-i345
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Public Management Research
Association
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JPART 2} :\32}-\345
PUBLICNESS AND ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE: A SPECIAL ISSUE
Sampling Designs for Analyzing Publicness:

Alternatives and Their Strengths and
Weaknesses
Hal G. Rainey
University of Georgia
ABSTRACT
Research comparing public and private organizations and otherwise analyzing "publicness"
involves complex challenges. These include the challenge of designing and attaining
adequate samples to represent the two complex categories of "public" and "private," as well
as dimensions of publicness, and subcategories and control variables needed for valid
comparisons. This review of sampling alternatives begins with discussion of the strengths
and weaknesses of the presumably optimal design, a national probability sample of
organizations. Due to the expensive nature of such a design-the discussion concentrates on
the one such study ever conducted-the discussion then considers the strengths and
weaknesses of the purposive samples and samples of opportunity that most research have
used. In spite of limitations in representativeness and in accounting for all variables needed
to eliminate alternative interpretations, studies using such samples can be aggregated to
support conclusions about differences between public and private organizations that are by
now well-founded. Researchers should continue to seek opportunities for the optimal large
representative samples. Lacking such opportunities, researchers can contribute usefully to
analysis of publicness by carefully designing their studies to make them consistent with
previous studies and to support aggregation with previous studies.
Do public organizations and the people in them have characteristics distinct from those in
other types of organizations, such as business firms and private nonprofit organizations?
Many organizations mix characteristics traditionally associated with public and private
organizations, such as high levels of government funding of a privately owned business
firm and many other mixed or hybridized situations. How does such hybridization affect
the organizations? Such matters are fundamental to the existence of a field such as public
administration and play an important role in many public policy decisions. If there is noth
ing distinctive about a public category of administration and organizations, we can simplify
matters by abolishing all academic programs in public administration. If it makes no dif
ference whether an organization operates under more public than private auspices, then we
can dispense with decisions about privatization of government services since it makes no
difference whether or not we privatize them.
Address correspondence to the author at hgrainey@uga.edu.
doi: 10.1093/jopart/mur029
The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Journal of Public Administration Research
and Theory, Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

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322 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory
These points imply that the need for analysis of publicness is obvious. Many analysts
of organizations, however, object to distinctions among categories such as public versus
private. The categories lump together in the public, private, and nonprofit categories,
a vastly diverse array of organizational types within each category. Many of these types
within these broad "sector" categories resemble similar types in the other sectors (e.g.,
public and private schools, public and private electric utilities and transportation activities,
and for-profit and nonprofit hospitals). Many of the activities of people and organizations in
the different sectors are very similar-making decisions, leading and motivating, setting
strategy, designing organizations, and work processes. The most prominent of organization
theorists have raised these sorts of objections and have emphasized the commonalities
among public, private, and nonprofit organizations (e.g., Simon 1995; Thompson 1962).
Resolving these conflicting perspectives through systematic analyses of publicness
involves major challenges in research design. Given the complexities of the sectors and
of publicness, how can one design research that elucidates these categories and concepts?
How can we represent such large, diverse categories in research designs. Factors such as
size, task or function, and industry characteristics can influence an organization more than
its status as a governmental entity. Research needs to show that these alternative factors do
not confuse analysis of differences between public organizations and other types. Obvi
ously, for example, if you compare large public agencies to small private firms and find
the agencies more bureaucratic, size may be the real explanation. Also, one would not
compare a set of public hospitals to private utilities as a way of assessing the nature of
public organizations. Among many research design challenges, this matter of how one
designs a sample of organizations or people is one of the very important ones. The sections
to follow examine alternative designs for sampling procedures that researchers have used,
to consider their pros and cons, to identify possibilities and challenges.
First, the discussion focuses on a rare example of a large national probability sample of
organizations-apparently the only such sample of organizations. Although not aimed at
analyzing publicness, this study found differences between public and private organiza
tions. The study not only represents some ideal characteristics for a study of publicness
but also illustrates many of the challenges that analysis of publicness must confront. These
challenges have led researchers to employ various less-than-ideal designs, including those
described in table I.1 Researchers have analyzed responses to national social surveys to
compare public and private employees' perceptions about their work. Others have inter
viewed executives who have experience in the pubic and private sectors or have conducted
case studies of individual public organizations and drawn conclusions about their distinc
tiveness. Researchers have studied opportunity or judgmental samples of public and private
organizations, rather than random or probability samples, sometimes with small samples
and sometimes with large, diverse samples. Others have studied public and private organ
izations in the same functional category, such as universities, schools, or nursing homes, or
have compared public and private versions of the same service, such as refuse collection.
Some researchers have analyzed "publicness" as a dimension, rather than a dichotomy
between public and private categories. Each of these designs has limitations, but each
has also contributed to the analysis of public-private distinctions and of publicness. Each
design remains a potential alternative for researchers, who need to consider their strengths
i For a similar but alternative categorization of designs for analyzing publicness, see Bozeman (1987, 43ff).

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Rainey Sampling Designs for Analyzing Publicness 323
and weaknesses as does the following discussion. The discussion concludes with observa
tions about ways in which many of these studies have produced similar findings that support
generalizations and ways in which future studies can continue to do so.
As implied already, the discussion will refer to public versus private comparisons and
to analyses of publicness interchangeably. There are important distinctions between these
two approaches, discussed later, but a comparison of public and private organizations can
be considered an analysis of publicness. In addition, sampling designs represent only one of
many research design challenges (such as measurement procedures and theories or models
to guide the design), but the discussion will concentrate on sampling challenges and closely
related matters.
THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM? A LARGE, NATIONALLY REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE
Ideally, an analysis of publicness requires a convincing sample, with a good model that
accounts for other variables besides the public-private dimension. Ideally, studies would
also have large, well-designed samples of organizations and employees, representing many
functions and controlling for many variables. Such studies require abundant resources and
have been rare and for certain purposes nonexistent in organizational or managerial
research.
As suggested by the first entry in table 1, the National Organizations Study (NOS) is an
exception to this generalization. For the NOS, an analysis of organizational structures and
human resource practices, the researchers drew a probability sample of organizations de
signed to represent the population of organizations in the United States (Kalleberg et al.
1996,2001). It is apparently the only study of a national probability sample of organizations
ever conducted. The NOS exemplifies not only possibilities for a study of a probability
sample but also complications that can arise in implementing such a study. NOS was first
conducted in 1991, and another, similar NOS was conducted in 2002. For purposes of the
present discussion, similarities between the two studies make it appropriate to refer to both
of them at various points, in spite of differences in the two studies.
Although the discussion to follow emphasizes limitations and challenges to which the
NOS points, the study produced important findings about publicness. The NOS researchers
did not intend the study as an examination of publicness. The results of the survey and the
analysis, however, indicated that public, nonprofit, and private organizations differed sig
nificantly on a measure of formalization and a measure of decentralization. On the measure
of formalization, which was actually a measure of formalization of personnel procedures
(e.g., the existence of documents on hiring/firing procedures, and documents on personnel
evaluation), public organizations were significantly higher than business firms. Public or
ganizations were significantly lower than business firms in the degree to which personnel
decisions were decentralized. These results are consistent with results of other studies (e.g.,
Feeney and Rainey 2009), as discussed later. The NOS has also made possible additional
analyses of public, private, and nonprofit differences (Frumkin and Galaskiewicz 2004).
Kalleberg et al. (2001) used the sample for the General Social Survey (GSS) as basis
for their sample of organizations. The GSS sample is a probability sample of individual
respondents in the United States that asks a large number of questions about many aspects
of the respondents' lives, including questions about their work and their attitudes about
their work. The NOS researchers contacted the respondents to the GSS, who were randomly
selected, to identify the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of the organization in

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Continued
Very general conclusions about

executive observations. Limited
public and private fromrespondents.

oneof occupational category
organizations have higher levels Verycategories.
public and private limited information about Questions about generalizability
three main categories. Very three categories (e.g., public employing organizations. sample size raises issues of
No clear evidence of validity of

of formalization of personnel
general conclusions
Small n for categoriesSmall
withinabout
n for
organizations).
systems than the
thecategories
private
Weaknesses of Analyses
No measures within the
the characteristics their
of "publicness."
to others.
of demographic and professional

survey provideddata for analysis
Americans. Repeated findings category provides some control
of differences between public

and private employees in for occupation characteristics
Sampling within an occupational and task. The of respondents.
organizations, including the
A representative sample of
reward preferences.
three types. A representative sample of

Strengths
2. Social surveys of probability samples of the population of the United States, with analysis of questions about work and the workplace
y sample of organizations representing the population of organizations in the United States Cervantes (1983) and experience as executives in individuals. Similar observations
Blumenthal (1983), Corporate executives with Direct observations by experienced
including public, private, and

Respondents to survey of a random
Institute for Electrical and

Organizations in the United States sample of members of the
Respondents to the GSS, across
nonprofit organizations.
4. Interviews or essays by executives experienced in the public and private sectors
3. Surveys of members of the same profession, in public and private sector jobs
Electronic Engineers.
Sectors and Units
ve Designs for Comparisons of Public and Private Organizations

20 years.
Rumsfeld (1983) government agencies.
National Organizations
Example Survey (Kalleberg Langbein and Lewis
et al. 1996, 2001)
Crewson (1995a, Crewson (1995a,
1995b, 1997) 1995b, 1997) and (1998)
Table 1

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categories. No direct comparisons
categories. The nature and effects
No direct evidence of ofapplicability
findings to other government No direct evidence of applicability No direct evidence of applicability
perspective is not necessarily various important topics (e.g.,

of findings to public and private
organizations in other functional organizations in other functional
employee perceptions of the
generalizability. The executive

generalizable or applicableorganizations.
to No direct
to private organizations.
of findings to government
representativeness and comparisons to private
Weaknesses of Analyses incentive system).

organizations.
evidence of generalizability within

provides some control for function
and task. Large sample provides evidence of generalizability within
by different executives support
Focus on one functional type

the functional category.
generalizations.
in public and private and task. Large sample provides
attempt at organizational of organizational processes and

Strengths
6. Studies of large samples of the same functional type of government agency, leading to generalizations about government agencies
(1990) administrators and teachers provides some control for function
5. Case studies of individual government agencies, leading to generalizations about government agencies
Chubb and Moe Respondents to a survey of Focus on one unctional category
7. Studies
Warwick (1975) of large
Case study of samples
a change
failed ofUS behaviors.
public and
in theIn-depth
private organizations
observation and analysiswithin the same functional category and local public finance
Department of State. government control.

A national sample of state
Alternative Designs for Comparisons of Public and Private Organizations
Sectors and Units
agencies.
(1975) varying degrees of

Holdaway et al. Canadian universities with
Table 1 (continued) Example
Meyer (1979)

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questions about representativeness
notprivate
carefulorganizations
to describe clearly the
be distinct for different functional
publicBoth
and generalizability. andpositive
of public and private distinctions
inclusion of particular subtypes
the study, of
clients, (e.g., Amirkhanyan et al., in the study. Some authors are
and
Smallnull findings could bein due toand ownership
and variations in publicness may
use simple government

organizations
categories, public and private
categories.serve different
Within populations
functional
organizations may operate in of very distinct ways. They may
opportunity samples leave
2008).
public and private organizations
the category. Results can support

policy and decisions for that Similarity of findings across these
Findings across different types of small sample studies, and with
other can also support general
across thoseoftwo
generalizability thecategories.
findings
provide evidence about
conclusions.
category
Strengths
States with varying degrees

nursing home facilities
Very large sample of public,
8. Surveys of respondents from small samples of public and private organizations

of public and private seven organizations
private, and nonprofit
schools in the United
in small samples of
organizations (two to
Universities in the United
Respondents to surveys
public and private
(JV = 14,423).
per sector).
Sectors and Units
ve Designs for Comparisons of Public and Private Organizations States

influence.
and Andersen (2010)

and Aldrich (1983),
Rainey (1983), Gabris
Example Lam (2009), Kurke
(1999), Brewer and
Table 1 (continued)
Amirkhanyan, et al Kurland and Egan
Tolbert (1985)
and Simo (1995),
(2008)

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represent all levels of government. represents only two geographical
or auspices as the definition of
that reduces differences with the It represents one geographic area
The sample is still not conclusively

The sample is still not conclusively
probabilistic and representative.
fee-charging public organization

government corporation or user
probabilistic and representative. governments and therefore
possibility, for example, that the

public. This leaves open the
public sample includes a

of the nation and does not It represents only two state
private sector sample.

enhances sample representativeness.
studies support generalizations about represented well the characteristics

this sample and findings in other public and private differences. The
personnel and the other with for heavy

increase managerial discretion over
Similarities between findings with unionization, enhances control

with recent personnel reforms to
geographic location and state_

The larger, more diverse sample Representation of two states, one
characteristics of the sample

of the population.
Strengths
agencies. The private sample
9. Surveys of respondents from large, diverseincluded aofvery diverse set of organizations

managers in government and
for-profit organizations, drawn

samples public andorganizations
such private in the area. randomly from a directory of
state and local government
organizations inprivate
the area nonprofit and private
included a diverse set of
York.NewThe public sample
Syracuse and Albany, nonprofit organizations in
managers in 196 public,
Respondents to a survey of Respondents to a survey of

Illinois and Georgia.
private, and nonprofit
Sectors and Units
igns for Comparisons of Public and Private Organizations
Bozeman (1995)
Table 1 (continued) Example Rainey, Pandey, and
Feeney and Rainey
(2009)

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Continued
occurs only a very few service areas,
such as refuse collection (Hodge,
cost efficiency meta-analysis, conclude that private numerous studies showing greater studies, such as an international service delivery may have different
of private service
delivery (e.g., Savas, 2000). Other 2000). Designing well-controlled
only one level of government. goals, serve different clients, or

challenging; public and private
sector superiority in efficiency
and institutional contexts, and Mixed findings. Proponents cite have other differences.
comparisons can be very
public vs. private differences support
of sharp differences between public

capacity of the "public" category. same service provide some control
and nonprofit organizations that conclusions about the explanatory Numerous studies provide a great deal
of evidence. Comparisons of the
closely resembled other studies of
government institutional. Findings

for service, function, and task
characteristics.
Strengths
wide variety of types of service.
and private service organizations

manufacturing organizations.
Numerous studies comparing public
and private service delivery in a
organizations,including public
10. Comparisons of public and private versions of service delivery of the same service
Strategic decisions in 30 British
and public and private
ri_/rinnrw_i \T_ _J_i:_._ _T^T_ _^_i

Sectors and Units
Table 1 (continued)
Example Hodge (2000)
Hickson et al. (1986)
Savas (2000) and

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publicness vary in different studies.
Very limited number of studies. The
conception and measures of
public and private status. Supports
analysis of mixed or hybridized comparison of "core" public

Supports conceptualization and approaches to dimensional
approaches.
Strengths
Organizations thatand
vary inprivate
control.for-profit
A sampleorganizations.
managers in public, nonprofit,
of 733 research and development
of organizational
publicness" and and publicness
"resource Respondents to a survey of 196

Sectors and Units
laboratories.
ll. Studies of "dimensional publicness"

Example
Table 1 (continued) and Bozeman
Bretschneider(1994) and Rainey, Pandey,
Bozeman and
Bozeman (1987) (1995)

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which the respondent and his or her spouse worked. Since these respondents had been ran
domly sampled, this made their work organizations a probability sample (Spaeth and
O'Rourke 1996, 23) 2
The NOS researchers then contacted the work organizations to identify personnel offi
cials from the organization to act as respondents for their organizations. The researchers
conducted telephone interviews with these officials, using a questionnaire that asked about
the characteristics and practices of the organizations, especially in areas related to person
nel and human resources. The researchers contended that the sampling procedure provided
a sample of all types, ages, and sizes of work establishments. Indeed, the sample did include
a distribution of organizations by industry that matched well against the distribution of
industries and functions in which respondents to the GSS and the Current Population Sur
vey said they worked (Spaeth and O'Rourke 1996,34-5). The sample also showed diversity
and dispersion by organizational size.
The NOS asked respondents to identify whether their work establishment was for
profit or not-for-profit. If the response indicated not-for-profit, the respondent was then
asked if the work establishment was public or private. This provides for a distinction be
tween public not-for-profit organizations and private not-for-profit organizations.3 The
NOS researchers analyzed differences among public, private, and nonprofit organizations
by using the for-profit category as the base category, with dummy variables for nonprofit
(the private not-for-profits) and for public (the public not-for-profits). As described earlier,
they found statistically significant differences indicating that public organizations had high
er levels of formalization of their personnel procedures and lower levels of decentralization
of decision making, as compared with the private organizations. The NOS analysis of such
differences leads to a number of observations and conclusions that indicate challenges and
issues for studies aiming to analyze publicness.
Response Rate Challenges

Implementation of the survey involved complex challenges. For the 1991 survey, from an
original sample of 1,127 work establishments, the final sample of completed and usable
responses included 727 or 64.5% of the original total. The attenuation resulted mainly from
refusals to participate.4 The telephone interviews required numerous contacts with respond
ents, with median interview involving six contacts and the maximum number of contacts
for an individual interview reaching a total of 58 contacts for one interview. The researchers
obtained the total of727 organizations in part by way of a mail survey that they sent to some
respondents upon their request, as an alternative to the telephone interview. Refusal rates
for this mail survey were quite high.
2 If the respondent worked in a larger organization, that made it more likely that another respondent would work in
the same organization, so the probability of selection into the sample of organizations was proportionate to
organizational size. The researchers contended that a sample for which probability of selection is proportionate to size
of the work establishment is statistically optimal for populations such as organizations that vary widely in size.
3 The 1991 survey also asked the respondent to select the type of organization the not-for-profit represented, from
among categories of government agency, hospital, school, college or university, and others. It also asked whether the
organization was a federal, state, or local agency. The 2002 NOS did not ask these questions.
4 Interviewees were allowed to request a mailed version of the questionnaire, and 434 such questionnaires were
mailed to respondents. Only 29.3% of these respondents returned the mail survey, whereas 44.2% refused.

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Sample Size and Representativeness Challenges

The sample size was ultimately rather small for certain purposes. As noted above, the
sample included a diverse array of organizational types. The researchers reported the dis
tribution of establishments by industry (agriculture, durable and nondurable manufactur
ing, transportation, retail trade, professional services, and other categories). This
distribution approximated that of other national probability samples such as the GSS
and the Current Population Survey, which are not surveys about organizations, but ask
about place of employment (Spaeth and O'Rourke 1996, 34). Whereas this provides ev
idence of the general representativeness of the sample, the sample characteristics also show
the limited representation of particular organizational types, such as public organizations.
For reasons not fully explained in their text, the NOS researchers' categorization of estab
lishments by industry includes the category of "public administration." This category
included only 8.1% of the sample (Spaeth and O'Rourke 1996, 34). In the United States,
there are fewer public and nonprofit organizations and employees than in the private sector,
and the public and nonprofit categories will make up smaller proportions of a probability
sample.5 This obviously imposes limits on the analysis of public organizations. For exam
ple, one might want to analyze differences among federal, state, and local public organ
izations or among types of public organizations such as labor departments, transportation
departments, and social welfare departments. One might want to analyze similarities and
differences between these types of public organizations and for-profit private firms. If these
categories of public organizations are represented at all, however, their sample size within
the larger sample would be too low for meaningful statistical analysis (using controls for
size and other variables). In the 1991 NOS, for example, only 17 respondents reported that
they worked for federal agencies.
Another issue in sample representativeness concerns the variations within the public
and private categories mentioned earlier. In the population of organizations in the United
States and other nations, some organizations fall into the categories of public agencies and
private firms without much dispute (Dahl and Lindblom 1953). The US Department of State
is a public or governmental agency. Microsoft may have large contracts and sales with
governments, but it is a private firm. Other organizations are hybridized versions of varying
levels of publicness (or "privateness") such as government corporations, heavily regulated
private firms (electric utilities), and firms with very high percentages of their revenues from
government contracts.
Sampling all these types of organizations appears challenging enough, but there are
still other categories within the public and private categories that complicate the sampling
process. Schools, universities, utilities, hospitals, transportation services (trains, buses, and
airlines) and other functional types of organizations operate under governmental and pri
vate auspices in various nations, but represent categories distinct from typical governmen
tal agencies. The NOS analysis apparently places in the public category all these types of
organizations whose representative responding to the survey says are in the not-for-profit
and public categories. That is, public schools go in the public category with government
agencies and private schools go in the category with private manufacturing and service
firms. As discussed later, this raises questions about the extent to which these different
5 In the 2002 survey, for example, 112 (21.7%) of the 515 establishments in the sample were public, as opposed to
private nonprofits (n = 39, 7.6%) or private for profit organizations (n = 360, 70%).

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types within the two sectors should be represented in a sample, which in tum raises issues
about stratifying the sample, and about increasing sample size and resource costs for the
study. An opposite sampling issue concerns representation of organizations that exist in
only one sector. Consider taking a random sample of US Departments of Defense, of State
and of the Treasury. There is only one of each. Although one could stratify to include public
and private schools, hospitals, and other types represented in both sectors, there are no
appropriate private counterparts for some government agencies.6
As noted above, the refusal rate was high, and this creates additional representative
ness issues. Other researchers have found that variation in response rates when surveying
respondents in different sectors (e.g., Pandey and Kingsley 2000; Pandey and Welch 2005),
across cities (e.g. DeHart-Davis 2007), and across states (e.g. DeHart-Davis and Bozeman
2001). Researchers have also found that representatives from private firms show a higher
likelihood of nonresponse than those from public organizations. Surveys of nonprofit or
ganization representatives tend to have lower response rates than the response rates for
public organization respondents. Achieving high, or even acceptable response rates, rep
resents a major challenge, as does the likelihood of unbalanced response rates for the sector
types (i.e., lower response rates from private organizations than from public organizations).
Unbalanced response rates raise problems of eliminating the possibility of response bias or
differential representativeness of the samples.
Resource Requirements
The high refusal rate corresponds with the level of difficulty encountered, and the resources
required to generate good response rates. This is reflected in the numerous contact attempts
by the NOS researchers, the accompanying mail survey, and their other efforts. To better
represent organizational types, especially within the public sector, one needs a larger sam
ple. One needs also to consider whether the sample should involve some stratifying or
"matching." That is, the sample could include a sufficiently large subsample of organi
zations that operate in both sectors, and with varying levels of publicness, such as hospitals
and schools, to analyzed difference due to levels of publicness. This will require a very
large sample for the overall study. With the other complications such as refusal rates, this
will make the optimal sample very expensive.
Limitations of Surveys
The NOS was a survey and surveys have well-known limitations. These include threats of
monomethod bias, response biases, limited fidelity or richness of the responses, and other
limitations. Alternative methods, however, such as close qualitative observation or in-person
interviews, and even analysis of archival data, can require much heavier investments of time
and resources. The reliance on survey responses also limits inclusion of various contextual
variables that can support analysis of why organizations might differ on certain variables. For
example, the NOS data set does not support analysis of why public organizations have more
6 The US Postal Service can also be considered unique to the public sector. Private package delivery firms make very
inappropriate comparison groups for the US Postal Service, for a lot of purposes, due to differences in size, mission and
task (daily mail deliveries, and others), unionization, and other characteristics. The US Postal Service and the
Department of Defense employ about half of the civilian workforce of the US Government.

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Rainey Sampling Designs for Analyzing Publicness i333
formalized personnel procedures than private organizations. The researchers simply con
clude that this must be due to stronger institutional influences on public organizations
(Kalleberg et al. 1996, 326). The data set does not make possible a rich analysis of such
questions as whether this higher formalization in government organizations reflects higher
formalization in organizations operating under civil service systems but does not characterize
certain types of government organizations (again, such as hospitals, electric utilities, or
government authorities or enterprises).
The NOS results offer very general conclusions, such as the finding mentioned above
about public organizations being more highly formalized that private organizations. Such
a general conclusion has theoretical and practical value. It obviously lacks many nuances,
however, about variations within the "public" category and about such matters as whether
public and private organizations similar in functional type (e.g., hospitals) differ. These
nuances are not readily analyzable given the limited public sector sample.
In spite of all these considerations about limitations, the findings of this rare national
probability sample of organizations have considerable significance for the study of public
and private organizations. With such a sample, organizational sociologists with no special
interest or concern about public versus private distinctions found significant differences.
They found that private, public, and nonprofit organizations differed in the degree to which
personnel procedures are formalized and decentralized. Without necessarily looking for
public versus private distinctions, the researchers found them. In addition, these findings
show consistency with those of other studies, described below, with more limited samples.
These findings from the only probability sample of organizations contrast sharply with the
assertions mentioned earlier that there are no significant differences between public and
private organizations (e.g., Simon 1995).
Social Surveys of Probability Samples of the Population of the United States, with
Analysis of Questions about Work and the Workplace
The second entry in table 1 refers to studies that compared public and private samples from
census data, large-scale social surveys, or national studies (Crewson 1995a, 1995b; Light
2002; Smith and Nock 1980; US Office of Personnel Management 2000). The GSS is sim
ilar to NOS in that it draws a national probability sample, but it differs in that it asks very
few questions about the respondents' work organizations. Others analyze a very large, pur
portedly representative sample of a large population, such as the US Office of Personnel
Management (OPM) survey of a very large sample of federal employees; OPM then com
pared some of the results to the survey responses of a large sample of private sector employ
ees. These studies produce highly aggregated findings that prove difficult to relate to the
characteristics of specific organizations and the people in them. Crewson's (1995a) analysis
of the GSS, for example, cannot go into depth about different organizations in the sample
because the survey asks questions about work attitudes but is not a study of organizations.
The studies do provide meaningful results, of course. For example, Crewson (1995b)
shows that across 20 years, respondents to the GSS, a survey of social attitudes and per
ceptions of a nationally representative sample of Americans, have provided evidence of
differences between persons employed in public organizations, as compared to those em
ployed in private organizations. Public sector respondents have consistently placed a lower
ranking on "high income" as the most important aspect of their jobs, as compared to private
sector respondents who gave a higher ranking to high income. The public sector

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respondents also gave consistently higher rankings than private sector respondents to work
that is useful to society, work that helps others, and work that provides a feeling of accom
plishment. The differences between the public and private respondents were not always
huge, and sometimes they were not statistically significant. They were, however, very con
sistent across time.7 These findings support very general generalizations. Obviously, there
are variations among public employees in such responses, by occupation, organizational
level, organizational function, and other differences. These variables are not represented in
the sample in frequencies high enough to analyze such variations. Nevertheless, these find
ings are consistent with other findings from studies with purposive samples and samples of
opportunity (e.g., Rainey 1982). Taken together, then, studies with different sampling de
signs can be aggregated to support generalizations about differences between public and
private organizations and the people in them.
Examining the NOS and these other large surveys suggests the characteristics needed
in a sample that will support rich analysis of publicness, in many different types of organ
izations. The sample would have to be very large and the study would require very high
levels of resources. To represent the populations of public and private organizations, as well
as types of organizations that operate in both sectors or that vary in publicness, the sample
would have to involve stratifying or matching to represent various types of organizations.
For example, the sample would ideally include large subsamples of such organizations as
public and private schools, utilities, transportation organizations, and hospitals. The sample
should also include, of course, organizations that may be unique to public or private aus
pices, such as the Departments of Defense and State. Refusal rates will likely be high,
a factor that will contribute to higher resource requirements to carry out follow-ups
and other ways of increasing participation. Given the challenges that such a large and
expensive study will involve, it becomes important to consider alternative designs. The
next section does so.
THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE: LESS COMPREHENSIVE DESIGNS AND SAMPLES OF

OPPORTUNITY
The challenges raised by a survey such as NOS suggest why researchers have adopted
a variety of less comprehensive approaches such as judgmental samples and samples of
opportunity. A review of these alternatives shows that although they often have sharp lim
itations compared to an optimal design, they have strengths as well, and have contributed to
progress in analyzing publicness. In addition, given the challenges that a large probability
sample imposes, researchers need to assess more feasible alternatives.
Before turning to empirical studies, a review of the publicness literature should note
that some authors have theorized about publicness on the basis of assumptions, previous
literature and research, and their own experiences (e.g., Dahl and Lindblom 1953; Downs
7 One should also note that the public and private samples are highly aggregated, involving respondents from all
organizational levels of many different types of public and private organizations. Other evidence indicates that
respondents at higher hierarchical levels and higher salary levels in public organizations tend to be much more likely to
rank high income lower, and to rank helping others and doing work that is useful to society higher, than public
employees at the lower hierarchical and salary levels. The mixing of these levels in the sample therefore attenuates or
lessens the public versus private distinction at the higher levels, making the consistent overall differences all the more
meaningful.

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1967; Wilson 1989). Similarly, but less systematically, some books about public bureau
cracies have simply provided a list of the differences between public and private based on
the authors' knowledge and experience (Gawthorp 1969; Mainzer 1973). These contribu
tions have provided theoretical and practical guidance for empirical researchers, but this
review will concentrate on empirical studies.
Surveys of Members of the Same Profession, in Public and Private Sector Jobs
As indicated by the third entry on table 1, researchers have taken the opportunity to com
pare respondents in the same professional specialization, but working in the public or pri
vate sectors. Langbein and Lewis (1998) used survey results from a large random sample of
members of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers, to compare those in gov
ernment jobs to those in private sector jobs on estimates of productivity levels and how they
relate to pay levels. The results suggested that the engineers in public sector jobs might be
somewhat less productive than those in private sector jobs, but they were paid less than
private sector counterparts, even taking into account their comparative productivity levels.
Crewson (1995a, 1995b) used the same survey to compare the public and private sector
engineers on their ratings of the importance to them of various job factors or incentives. The
public sector electrical engineers were significantly higher in their ratings of work that is
useful to society and work that is helpful to others. These findings are consistent with many
other studies that have found that public sector respondents place higher importance on
altruistic and public service rewards in their work than do private sector respondents.
Chubb and Moe (1990) analyzed responses to a large survey of teachers and admin
istrators in public and private schools in the United States. Among other findings, their
results indicated that respondents from public schools perceived less control over the
school's standards, procedures, and curriculum than did private school respondents.
The public schools, then, appeared more public in the level of external institutional control
and intervention. Although public organizations can vary widely in autonomy and "power"
(Carpenter 2001: Meier and Bothe 2007), various studies from different nations with dif
ferent samples have found that public organizations tend to show less autonomy and more
influence of external institutions than more private organizations (e.g., Hickson et al. 1986;
Kalleberg et al. 1996, 326).
The studies of respondents within the same professional specialization provide some
control for occupational, technological, and task contexts, although the controls are not nec
essarily precise (e.g., engineers and teachers might differ among themselves on professional
and task dimensions). Such comparisons do provide some protection against specious results
due to procedures such as comparing very different professionals or occupations in the public
and private sectors (e.g., comparing public sector social workers to private sector salesper
sons). As suggested in table 1, comparisons within professional categories do leave ques
tions about whether results for a professional category generalize to other categories. As
described above, however, correspondence between results for comparisons within profes
sions and findings with types of studies contribute valuably to cumulation of findings.
Interviews or Essays by Executives Experienced in the Public and Private Sectors
Executives and managers who have served in both public agencies and private business
firms usually emphasize important differences between the two settings, although they also

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emphasize general similarities in leadership roles in the different sectors (Blumenthal 1983;
Cervantes 1983; Hunt 1999; IBM Endowment for the Business of Government 2002;
Rumsfeld 1983; Weiss 1983). These testimonials offer a richness of descriptive detail
and explanation, as opposed to responses to highly structured questionnaire items. These
interviews or essays frequently advance very similar observations about the government
setting. They emphasize administrative constraints such as civil service systems, the stron
ger role of external political institutions and processes than in the private sector, the greater
difficulty in assessing performance due to complex goals and the absence of such indicators
as profits and sales, and other differences from the private business setting. These simi
larities among observations by different executives, and their consistency with evidence
from other types of studies, contribute to support for general conclusions about the impli
cations of publicness. As forms of evidence in themselves, however, they have the limi
tations described in table 1. They apply primarily to the executive and managerial levels,
and differences might fade at lower levels. As one gains the richness and nuance of more
qualitative approaches such as these, sample size attenuates. There remain questions about
whether the executive's observations might reflect a particular governmental setting such as
a particular type of agency-a highly politicized agency, for example, as opposed to a rel
atively autonomous agency.
Case Studies of Individual Government Agencies, Leading to Generalizations about

Government Agencies
Occasionally scholars have conducted research projects that measure or observe only pub
lic bureaucracies, but then draw conclusions about their differences from private organ
izations. Some of these studies have concentrated on one agency. For example,
Warwick (1975) conducted a case study of a failed attempt at organizational change in
the US Department of State. He drew general conclusions about why governmental bureau
cracies tend toward high levels of bureaucratization and administrative constraint and of
external political influence and internal resistance to change. Where these observations
coincide with the conclusions of other studies of publicness, they can add to support
for generalizations across studies. As table 1 suggests, such analyses include no evidence
of the characteristics of private sector organizations, however, and leave obvious questions
about validation of their conclusions.
Studies of Large Samples of the Same Functional Type of Government Agency,

Leading to Generalizations about Government Agencies
Researchers have also studied a large sample of government organizations from the same
functional category and drawn conclusions about the characteristics of government organ
izations. Meyer (1979) analyzed a sample of 240 state and local government financial
administration agencies. He found evidence that the agencies were more subject to change
than conventional stereotypes might suggest. In addition, such variables as organizational
leadership and effective claims to domain mediated the environmental influences on the
agencies such that the influences led to change in some but not others. Meyer ultimately
drew conclusions about the nature of government organizations. Among other conclusions,
he argued (190-221) that government agencies usually have no market or quasi
market alternatives. This results in vague goals and limits government agencies' choices

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of organizational forms to that of Weberian hierarchy, with emphasis on conformity to rules

and procedures, leading to "rule boundedness." These "conformity criteria" displace
efficiency criteria with increased external "societal determination" by national bureau
cratic institutions.8 As table 1 suggests, studies of this type obviously provide no direct
private sector comparison sample. They also leave questions as to whether their findings
apply to public organizations in other functional categories. For example, might public
finance agencies, due to the nature of their tasks and particularly high accountability re
quirements, tend more toward bureaucratic hierarchy and conformity criteria than most
other government agencies?
Studies of Large Samples of Public and Private Organizations Within the Same
Functional Category
As the seventh entry of table 1 indicates, researchers have compared large samples of public
and private organizations within the same functional category. This avoids the problem of
having no representation of private organizations within the sample. As the table indicates,
these studies have provided evidence about distinctions between public and private hos
pitals (Savas 2000, 190), schools (Chubb and Moe 1990), nursing homes (Amirkhanyan
et al. 2008), airlines (Backx et al. 2002), research and development (R&D) activities
(Bozeman and Bretschneider 1994), and electric utilities (Atkinson and Halversen
1986).9 These studies have found differences that show that the public-private distinction
appears meaningful even when the same general functional types of organizations operate
under both auspices. As the table also emphasizes, however, the studies do not provide
evidence about whether their conclusions generalize to public and private organizations
in other functional categories. Although space limits preclude a full review of the variations
among these studies, the variations indicate that the nature of the public-private distinctions
and of variations in publicness can vary across functional categories, due to variations in the
influences of task and technology, different market environments, or variations in public
policy domain or in clients and customers.
Surveys or Observations of Respondents from Small Samples of Public and Private

Organizations
Other researchers compare small sets of public and private organizations, usually comparing
survey responses from managers or employees. There have been many of these studies, and
although they focus on a diverse array of dependent variables, some of them have reported sim
ilar findings on the same variables that contribute to cumulation of evidence. The studies have
compared respondents from public and private organizations on organizational commitment,
work satisfaction, perceptions of organizational structure and reward systems, leadership
behaviors, conflict resolution, and other variables (e.g., Andersen 2010; Brewer and Lam
8 These conclusions resemble those of some other analysts of government bureaucracy, but not others such as,
Goodsell (2004), Kelman (2005), and Rainey and Steinbauer (1999).
9 Similarly, other studies compare a function, such as management of computers or the innovativeness of information
technology in government and business organizations (Bretschneider 1990; Bretschneider and Wittmer 1993; Moon
and Bretschneider 2002). Still others compare state-owned enterprises to private firms (Hickson et al. 1986; MacAvoy
and Mclssac 1989; Mascarenhas 1989).

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i338 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory
2009; Buchanan 1974,1975; Kurke and Aldrich 1983; Kurland and Egan 1999; Mintzberg
1972; Porter and Lawler 1968; Rainey 1979,1983). The studies obviously include different
organizations from the public and private sector to try to represent in the sample the diversity of
the sectors or at least some of the diversity. Especially for very small samples-some studies
compare to public organizations to two private one (e.g., Gabris and Simo 1995)-questions
remain about how well the small samples represent the full populations. They really cannot
account well for the variations within the two sectors in organizational task, size, age, and
many other variables.
Researchers interested in focusing on variations in publicness as a dimension have
pointed out that these small sample comparisons have often dichotomized public and pri
vate organizations simply on the basis of ownership (Bozeman and Bretschneider 1994).
This omits attention to variations in the degree of publicness, represented by differences in
the level of government funding and government control. Actually, some of these studies
do not dichotomize only on the basis of public versus private ownership or auspices but also
on the basis of public versus private sources of resources or funding (e.g., Rainey 1983).
This means that the study compares the organizations that Dahl and Lindblom (1953) re
ferred to as "agencies" and "enterprises" and that Wamsley and Zald (1973) classified as
publicly owned and funded versus those that are privately owned and funded. These
dichotomies at least avoid including hybridized organizations such as government corpo
rations into the sample. They do not offer a lot of information about variations in public
ness, but they do compare "core" public and private organizations that represent poles at
the end of the dimensions of publicness. Still, this set of studies tends to involve dichot
omous comparisons of public and private organizations based on hypotheses drawing on
theoretical arguments and previous empirical evidence that they should differ. They do not
really test directly the assertions about why public and private organizations should differ
and do not directly measure and assess the factors and causal dynamics that produce the
differences. This raises a challenge for future research, to which the discussion turns in the
conclusion section below.
Some subsests of these studies have reported similar findings about public versus pri
vate differences in managers' perceptions of organizational structure and reward systems,
about public organizational settings imposing more administrative constraints, about
reward systems in the public sector making it more difficult to fire poor performers
and reward good performers with higher pay, and about higher levels of public service
motivation, altruistic and social service values, and lower emphasis on the importance
of pay as a work reward. The studies vary so much in focal dependent variables, however,
that they do not support high levels of cumulation of findings except in the several areas just
mentioned, and do not support meta-analytic studies.
Surveys of Respondents from Large, Diverse Samples of Public and Private

Organizations
As the ninth entry on table 1 indicates, some researchers have drawn large, diverse samples
of different types of public and private organizations. One of the subsamples in the two
studies listed on the table were drawn using a random sampling method. These samples
provide more assurance against possible biases due to very small samples that misrepresent
the populations. These studies, however, still leave questions about representing the full
populations. For example, the Rainey, Pandey, and Bozeman (1995) sample consisted of

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organizations from areas in New York State, so the sample is not verifiably representative
of the entire nation. These studies of larger samples share many of the characteristics of the
smaller samples described in the section above, such as the variables on which they focus
and their tendency to cumulate on findings similar to those of the small sample studies.
Often, they have added more convincing evidence of distinctive aspects of public manage
ment. For example, since there are public and private sector manufacturing and service
firms in England, Hickson et al. (1986) were able to compare strategic decisions in the
private manufacturing firms to those in the public manufacturing firms and in the private
service organizations to those in the public service organizations. Among other findings,
their results indicated that in both types of public organizations, strategic decision processes
tended toward a more "vortex sporadic" character than in the private organizations. That is,
the public sector decision processes were more turbulent, with more external intervention,
than the processes in the private organizations, and thus more akin to "garbage can" pro
cesses as depicted by Cohen et al. (1972).10
Thus, these studies provide more opportunities for testing hypotheses about why pub
lic and private organizations differ or resemble each other and the nature of the differences
and the influences on them. There remains the same challenge mentioned above for smaller
samples, of providing more direct tests of the theoretical postulates about the influences that
lead to public versus private differences.
Comparisons of Public and Private Versions of Service Delivery of the Same Service
Still another source of evidence about publicness in the form of public versus private com
parisons comes from analyses of public versus private delivery of a particular service.
These studies are often distinct from those described in seventh entry in table 1 because
they focus on outcomes of public or private provision of a service, usually with emphasis on
the cost efficiency of service provision, but often with attention to the quality of the service
as well. With that focus, these studies often pay little or no attention to organizational char
acteristics and managerial dynamics. Most of these studies are oriented to the policy de
bates over whether a particular service should be provided by the public or private sector
and over the privatization of government services. The wide array of studies have led to
conflicting conclusions. Savas (2000), for example, reviews numerous studies of public and
private provision of numerous public services and concludes that private providers usually
deliver services more efficiently with equivalent quality. The preponderance of studies do
appear to support this conclusion. Hodge (2000), on the other hand, reports a meta-analysis
of research in multiple nations and concludes that higher levels of efficiency due to private
provision are restricted to only a few service areas, such as refuse collection and building
maintenance. Other experts have added expressions of skepticism about the claims that
private sector service provision is superior (e.g., Sclar 2000). Studies of one functional
type, however, may not apply to other functional types. The public-private distinction
apparently has different implications in one industry or market environment, such as
io As another example, Pandey and Scott (2002) used the data set that Rainey et al. (1995, see table 1 ), with additional
data from administration of the same survey in Florida and Colorado, were able to show that red tape and formalization
of rules in organizations are distinct concepts in both public and private (including private nonprofits) organizations.
Such a finding for a smaller, less diverse sample would have raised more doubts about its representativeness and
validity.

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hospitals, compared to another industry or market, such as refuse collection (Hodge 2000).
Yet another complication is that public and private organizations within a functional cat
egory may not actually do the same thing or operate in the same way (Kelman 1985). For
example, private and public hospitals may serve different patients and operate under dif
ferent rules and policies, and public and private electric utilities may have different funding
patterns. For example, Kelman (1985) pointed out that organizations managing government
hospitals operate under different rules for hospital construction contracts than private sector
hospital management firms. The public hospitals also face uniform rules and policies about
the size of hospital rooms and other details that influence costs of construction.
Studies of 'Dimensional Publicness'
Following upon Bozeman's (1987) analysis of publicness as a continuum along two dimen
sions, some researchers have operationalized the dimensions and examined their relations
to organizational characteristics. Bozeman suggested that rather than treating public versus
private as a dichotomy, publicness should be conceived as varying along a dimension of
financial or resource publicness and another dimension of publicness based on political
authority. When people in an organization have more authority over the financial resources
of the organization, the organization has less financial or resource publicness. Drawing on
property rights theory from economics, Bozeman argued that the control of the financial
resources of an organization has very significant effects on managerial incentives and de
cisions in the organization that in turn influence other characteristics of the organization. In
very public organizations where people in the organization have little control of this sort,
these effects on managerial incentives and decisions attenuate. Organizations also vary in
their level of political authority. Organizations receive varying levels of authorization to act
on behalf of government or as agent of the government. Government agencies have more of
this authorization than do most private business firms, but firms with high amounts of fund
ing from government contracts in a sense are acting as agents for the government, as are
firms operating under high levels of government regulations.
Bozeman and Bretschneider (1994) put these ideas to work in an analysis of survey
results for 733 R&D laboratories and the relations between publicness and the laboratories'
outputs and bureaucratic characteristics (forms of "red tape"). Resource publicness was
measured by questions asking about the percentage of a laboratory's budget provided by
government grants, appropriations, and equipment purchases. The researchers measured
publicness of the laboratories' goals and agendas with questions about the importance
of government funding to the laboratory's existence and research focus and measured
"communications publicness" with questions about the percentage of phone calls and mail
that were exchanged with government personnel. To be able to compare publicness results
to results using the more frequently studied public versus private comparisons, they also
measured "core publicness" by whether the laboratory was located in government, indus
try, or a university.
Concerning laboratory outputs, the resource publicness variables related significantly
to the proportion of time spent on producing journal articles (a public domain output) and
on obtaining patents (a more proprietary output). Higher levels of resource publicness were
associated with more concentration on producing articles, the public domain outputs. In the
core publicness comparison, status as a government or university laboratory was also sig
nificantly and very strongly related to concentration on journal articles. To analyze

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bureaucratic characteristics, the survey asked for estimates of the time required to hire
a new person, fire a person, purchase equipment, obtain permission to submit a paper
for publication, and for research to be circulated outside the organization. Resource pub
licness in the form of higher levels of government appropriations related significantly to the
latter two forms of red tape-time required to submit a paper for publication and to
circulate research results. Core publicness on the other hand-status as a government
laboratory-related very strongly to the time required for hiring and firing. Thus, the results
indicated that both dimensional publicness and core publicness relate to important char
acteristics of the laboratories but to different characteristics.
Rainey et al. (1995, see ninth entry on table 1) also employed dimensional and core
publicness variables in analyzing organizational red tape, using survey results for repre
sentatives of 196 public, private, and nonprofit organizations. The survey included ques
tions about resource publicness that asked about the percentage of the organization's
budget that came from government contracts and grants. "Influence publicness" questions
asked about the extent to which external government organizations and officials exerted
strong control and influence on the organization. The organizations were also compared by
"sector" or status as a government, private, or private nonprofit organization. Resource
publicness related significantly to higher levels of general red tape-a general question
about the level of red tape in the organization. Influence publicness related significantly
to survey responses indicating that the respondent perceived personnel rules to constrain the
relationship between performance and rewards. Sector related significantly to both of these
variables-to general red tape and to personnel rule constraints-but was also the only
independent variable significantly related to questions about how long it takes to hire
and fire, and this relationship was very strong. These results, together with those of
Bozeman and Bretschneider (1994), are consistent with the conclusion that both dimen
sional publicness and sector (core publicness) can relate to organizational outputs, but
in different ways. The sector comparisons appear to reflect such distinctions as public
organizations falling under civil service systems and the legal environment of public em
ployment law. The dimensional publicness results, and especially those for resource pub
licness, appear to capture the governmental accountability requirements that increase with
the level of governmental contracts and grants, and the influence of government funding on
whether organizational outputs are more in the public domain as opposed to proprietary.
The sampling implications of analyses of dimensional publicness include the need for large
samples of organizations that vary in levels of government funding and government influence on
the organizations. The studies to date indicate that the resource or financial publicness dimension
can be measured by simply asking respondents about levels of government funding through
various sources, such as grants, contracts, and appropriations. The other dimension, that is
supposed to represent variations in the degree of political authority, has varied in their
definition and measurement in different studies and need further conceptual development.
CONCLUSIONS
The sampling designs reviewed here raise challenges for researchers, but the body of
research offers as much cumulation on certain findings, using different sampling
approaches, as one can find for any topic in the social and administrative sciences. As noted,
the studies show evidence that public or governmental organizations show higher levels of
external institutional influences than do business organizations. Government organizations

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show higher levels of certain types of organizational structuring and rule constraints, es
pecially in personnel administration. People in government express certain differences in
work-related attitudes and values than people in business firms, such as higher levels of
altruistic and public service values and lower valuation of high income as an ultimate
reward for work. These and other findings cumulating in the research need further confir
mation and refinements, of course.
In pursuit of further evidence, the most desirable sample is a large, representative one,
including many different organizational types and settings. This will involve stratifying the sam
ple to represent such types, including types of organizations that operate in both the public and
private sectors and that vary in publicness. Yet this review has discussed the challenges that
such a design imposes, including high resource requirements, the likelihood of difficulties
in attaining high response rates, and others. In spite of the limitations of more opportunistic
designs reviewed here, researchers have continued to publish them in large part because
they have produced significant findings and meaningful results. Given the success of these
less expensive and more feasible studies, researchers need to continue to consider them.
In so doing researchers need also to consider the limitations and weaknesses identified
here and to work to address them. Now that a body of research has built up, researchers should
concentrate on aligning additional studies with previous research, to the extent possible. Es
pecially for smaller samples, researchers need to be clearer about the nature of organizations
in the sample, in terms of their functions and tasks, of government funding and control, as
well as other control variables. Researchers need to more carefully review previous studies to
consider how their concepts, variables, and measures, and the organizations in the sample,
can resemble those of other studies in ways that provide for cumulation of findings. Many of
the studies have been presented as if they are exploratory. The literature reviews tend to say,
basically, that there are reasons to argue that government organizations or employees should
differ from those of private sector employees, so let's see if they do. Future research needs to
develop clearer theoretical rationales for why and how publicness, in the sense of core pub
licness and dimensional publicness, makes a difference. Elements of those rationales need to
be better represented in the research designs. The small set of studies of dimensional pub
licness provide examples of one approach to such elaborated analysis. They show the fea
sibility that representation of such factors as variations in government funding and
government control or influence can be included in research in ways that lead to meaningful
findings and elaborated explanations of those findings.
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Sampling Designs for Analyzing Publicness: Alternatives and Their Strengths and

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PUBLICNESS AND ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE: A SPECIAL ISSUE

Sampling Designs for Analyzing Publicness:

Address correspondence to the author at hgrainey@uga.edu.

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THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM? A LARGE, NATIONALLY REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE

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Very general conclusions about

public and private fromrespondents.

No clear evidence of validity of

of demographic and professional

Americans. Repeated findings category provides some control

of differences between public

three types. A representative sample of

Blumenthal (1983), Corporate executives with Direct observations by experienced

including public, private, and

Institute for Electrical and

Respondents to the GSS, across

Sectors and Units

ve Designs for Comparisons of Public and Private Organizations

Rumsfeld (1983) government agencies.

1995b, 1997) 1995b, 1997) and (1998)

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perspective is not necessarily various important topics (e.g.,

generalizability. The executive

representativeness and comparisons to private

Weaknesses of Analyses incentive system).

evidence of generalizability within

Focus on one functional type

attempt at organizational of organizational processes and

(1990) administrators and teachers provides some control for function

Chubb and Moe Respondents to a survey of Focus on one unctional category

Department of State. government control.

(1975) varying degrees of

Table 1 (continued) Example

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use simple government

public and private organizations

the category. Results can support

States with varying degrees

Very large sample of public,

8. Surveys of respondents from small samples of public and private organizations

ve Designs for Comparisons of Public and Private Organizations States

and Andersen (2010)

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The sample is still not conclusively

fee-charging public organization

probabilistic and representative. governments and therefore

possibility, for example, that the

public sample includes a

private sector sample.

enhances sample representativeness.

studies support generalizations about represented well the characteristics

personnel and the other with for heavy

Similarities between findings with unionization, enhances control

geographic location and state_

characteristics of the sample

agencies. The private sample

9. Surveys of respondents from large, diverseincluded aofvery diverse set of organizations

for-profit organizations, drawn