| Public administration scholars have long been interested in the professional orientations of public sector executives. An important idea from the body of mainstream public administration theory is that of the "public service orientation," that is, the notion that public administrators strongly embrace a duty to serve the public interest. This professional orientation has been argued to underlie a host of attitudinal, motivational, affective, and behavioral differences between private executives and their public sector counterparts. The goal of the current project was to explore the public service orientation in the context of American college and university leadership through an analysis of administrative orientation. The study employed Q methodology as an intensive, mixed qualitative-quantitative approach that is well-suited to mapping persons' points of view. Thirty-seven senior college administrators were asked to rank a series of statements regarding the administrative values, motives, and attitudes that underlie their own subjective perspectives on administrative conduct. Analysis of the study's data proceeded in two stages: (1) the factor analysis and interpretation of the holistic administrative perspectives offered by participants and (2) a qualitative comparison of these perspectives to extant scholarly portrayals of the public service orientation. Results indicated the existence of two major perspectives among higher education administrators. Factor A (Societal Trusteeship) is fundamentally oriented toward the needs of external society, and expresses a willingness to leverage institutional resources to improve the human condition. Factor B (Organizational Stewardship), by contrast, is an internally-oriented perspective that places primary emphasis on institutional performance. Importantly, the factors are not dichotomous, and suggest a high degree of normative overlap in the professional orientations of college administrators. While the societal trusteeship perspective appears to represent a close approximation to the idealized public service orientation, traces of this orientation also are evident in the organizational stewardship viewpoint. In total, the study's findings underscore the conceptual complexity of the public service orientation. |
