Comparing Affective Commitment in the Public and Private Sectors: A Comprehensive Test of Multiple Mediation Effects

Employees’ organizational commitment is associated with a number of positive outcomes, such as employee motivation, job satisfaction, productivity, and retention. But previous research has suggested that there may be important sector differences in both commitment and its explanations, yet results are very mixed. We study sector differences in affective organizational commitment among 1,043 public and private office workers who perform very similar tasks across sectors, testing the influence of factors thought to explain commitment and expected to vary between the sectors. We propose that the mixed results are due to different variables mediating the relationship between sector and organizational commitment. Conducting a multiple mediation analysis, we find that more hierarchy negatively mediates the relationship between public sector employment and organizational commitment. On the other hand, the relationship between public sector employment and organizational commitment is positively mediated by public service motivation and participatory management. This highlights the importance of not only studying simple sector differences, but also including relevant individual and organizational-level variables that can explain the mechanisms behind such differences.     

How Election Polls Shape Voting Behaviour

This article investigates how election information such as opinion polls can influence voting intention. The bandwagon effect claims that voters ‘float along’: a party experiencing increased support receives more support, and vice versa. Through a large national survey experiment, evidence is found of a bandwagon effect among Danish voters. When voters are exposed to a news story describing either an upwards or downwards movement for either a small or large party, they tend to move their voting intentions in the according direction. The effect is strongest in the positive direction – that is, when a party experiences increased support, more follows. Consistent effects are found across two different parties for a diverse national sample in a political context very different from earlier research on the bandwagon effects. Considering previous research and the fact that evidence is not found that suggests that the effect of polls vary across sociodemographic groups, the results imply that bandwagon behaviour is based not on social or political contingencies, such as media or political institution, but on fundamentals of political cognition.     

Prostitution in Denmark: Research and Neo-liberal Public Debates

Prostitution is a worldwide phenomenon, and so are the controversies surrounding it. In Denmark, as in many countries, there is an ongoing public debate about whether it should be seen as a social/political problem, or as a job like any other. The debate takes place within the tension between welfare state discourses and neo-liberal discourses.     

National Identity: Civic,Ethnic, Hybrid,and Atomised Individuals

We challenge the civic–ethnic dichotomy drawn by previous authors and propose a four-category typology of identities based on out-group tolerance and in-group attachment. Drawing from work on national identity formation and nation-building, we test hypotheses about the processes that cause individuals to adopt one identity over others using survey data based on representative samples of five ethnic groups in Ukraine. We find that the effects of socialisation processes vary greatly depending upon ethnic group. Our results challenge some long-held assumptions about the potential destabilising effects of ‘ethnic’ identities and the degree to which ‘civic’ identities correspond to values and behaviours supportive of democracy.