Theory and hypotheses

Studies have shown graduates in Masters of Business Administration (MBA) and Masters in Public Policy/Public Administration (MPP/MPA) tend to have different motivation, personal values, and perceptions of public and private sectors; and that, these differences determined their provisional employment preferences. MPA and MBA programs, for example, generally provide training to students about management competencies. While both programs are professional master’s degrees, they tend to differ in terms of courses and subjects. For instance, scholars have pointed out that MPP/MPA differ from MBA program in terms of the goals in which the program aimed to achieve (^{Box, 1999}). The long tradition of MPA program in the United States, for example, has been “to develop the capacity of graduates to exercise delegated public authority wisely, effectively and lawfully” (^{Henry et al. 2009, p. 122}). Whereas MBA programs tend to offer courses related to accounting, economics, marketing, management, finance and analytics.

MBA students who are more “business-oriented” generally preferred to find employment in the private sector. Students in MBA programs are more extrinsically motivated. According to ^{Van der Wal and Oosterbaan (2013)}, they tended “[to look] for a dynamic environment in which they can earn a great deal of money and where high work pressure leads to many challenges.” (p. 255). Indeed, several empirical studies have shown that managers in the private sector were strongly motivated by higher opportunity to get employment, higher salary, promotion, financial rewards, a clearer promotion path, and professional development (see^{Buelens and Van den Broeck, 2007}). These are incentives driven mostly by economic and material needs, such as good retirement, accomplishing goals that align with organizational mission. In short, an individual is drawn to the private sector in order to satisfy personal needs rather than society needs (^{Wright and Grant, 2010}).

While business school graduates are usually hired in the private sector, MPP/MPA graduates often seek employment and positions in the public sector (^{Bright, 2016}). MPP/MPA programs tend to attract those that are aspired to work as public managers or executive level positions in the public sector. According to ^{Tschirhart et al. (2008)}, the “[c]hoice of an MPA over an MBA program may reflect a call to public service.” (p. 672). MPA graduates can be found working as policy analysts, state and local government officials, public managers and city managers. They can take on leadership role in managing nonprofit organizations, such as charitable foundation, grassroots or activist organizations. For the most part, students in MPA programs received training in a broad set of management and leadership skills; these may include courses related to public management, public institutional values, administrative analysis, theory of organizations, and financial skills. Some MPA programs cover topics related to service leadership and ethical theory.

Motivation, perceptions, and values: Why MPP/MPA and MBA students have different career preferences?

Most studies have shown students in public policy or administration programs prefer to work in the public or nonprofit sector (^{Pedersen, 2013}); and that, the motivation to work in the sector was driven by their selflessness, integrity, and compassion (^{Baarspul and Wilderom, 2011}). The desire to work in the public sector that makes a difference to society at large is consistent with the logic presented in the public service motivation (PSM) literature (^{Pedersen, 2013}; ^{Van der Wal and Oosterbaan, 2013}).

An extension of the PSM theory suggests MPP/MPA graduates are motivated to work in the public sector because, over time, they developed a sense of belonging and sympathy for people who need help; they feel obligated to self-sacrifice for the collective good; sympathetic to others with a sense of civic duties to protect and represent the public’s interest (^{Perry, 1996}; ^{Wright and Grant, 2010}; ^{Pedersen, 2013}). Students in MPA/MPP programs were assumed to be intrinsically motivated. They sought to enhance and protect the public interest in working in the public sector. They are also attracted to the policy-making process because they feel they can make a difference by developing and implementing changes through the policy-making process.

Studies have also shown that students who have higher levels of PSM score were more likely to engage in socially valued or charitable activities, e.g., volunteering or giving donation (^{Clerkin et al., 2009}). ^{Piatak (2016)}, for example, studied 122 graduate students and found that students who donated to charities have higher levels of PSM score; and that they were more likely to work in the public sector. At the international level, Pederson (2013) studied 718 Danish students to understand PSM in students from fields of economics, political science, and law. While the field of study mattered less in predicting sector choice, the study found individual student’s desire to serve others made a difference in their decision to get employment in the public sector. ^{Wright (2007)} finds that the mission statement of organizations plays a significant role in one’s choice of an organization for employment. That is, individuals are attracted to public sector because they feel passionate about certain issues. ^{Homberg and Vogel (2016)} found that human resources practices that pay attention to the intrinsic needs of employees tend to have a higher level of PSM among employees. Others found similar findings (^{Vandenabeele, 2008}).

The main argument is that graduate students in the MPP/MPA program tend to have a string conviction for public service and thus a higher level of PSM compared to MBA graduates; and that, they are more likely to be interested in serving their community, more likely to have a higher sense of duty and service, and less likely to be interested in gaining resources. Subsequently, students who are driven by intrinsic needs are more likely to choose public administration, public affairs, and public policy as a graduate field of study. The assumption is that they are interested to expand knowledge and skills as well as gain employment in the public sector. Thus, we hypothesize

H1: MPA/MPP students have stronger motivation to work in the public sector than MBA students

H2: MPA/MPP students have a more positive perception of the public sector than MBA students.

A study of 884 public and private managers in America and Canada by ^{Stackman et al. (2006)} found a difference in their personal values highlighting the importance of a public- versus private-sector ethos. While there are various definitions of personal values offered in the management literature (^{Van der Wal and Oosterbaan, 2013}), ^{Van der Wal et al., (2008)} defined values as “important qualities and standards that have a certain weight in the choice of action.” (p. 468). For example, personal values such as world peace, equality, inner harmony, and wisdom are often associated with those who prefer to work in the public sector; whereas comfortable life, happiness, pleasure, and accomplishments tend to be ranked higher by managers in the private sector (^{Stackman et al., 2006}). These values capture the “existence of a sector’s ethos … the values systems of managers who work within that sector.” (^{Stackman et al., 2006, p. 578}). They are the “goals or criteria that we use to determine the desirability of certain actions or motives in our lives” (^{Lyons et al., 2006, p. 606}).

However, there may not be a significant difference between students who are private-sector oriented and students who are public-sector oriented. Two factors could explain this phenomenon. First, MBA and MPP/MPA students share similar moral judgements than originally hypothesized. For example, MBA curricula are increasingly emphasizing on ethics (^{Richards et al., 2002}; ^{De Volkskrant, 2009}). There has been a growing attitude towards corporate social responsibilities--an integral part of public accountability, where MBA programs are not just focusing on consumers and marketing but also on workplace spirituality. According to Minitzberg (2002), MBA programs also focus on “solving messy, value-laden, ambiguous problems that often have no clear solutions.” (p. 10).

Second, similar to the private sector, employees working in the public sector is increasingly facing similar managerial challenges, i.e., high expectation and pressure to meet organizational goals and missions. Scholars have warned about the rise in the New Public Management (NPM ) movement, which influences MPP/MPA curricula. Students who aspired to work in the public sector are more extrinsically motivated and career-oriented (^{Lyons et al., 2006}). They are also motivated by monetary rewards. Another related factor is related to the blurring of sectors. Most employees in modern day public sector are expected to work in an environment that contributes to the blurring of public and private sectors. The working environment--especially for those in the public management and business administration--- is becoming complex (bureaucratic structure), which means public-private distinction becomes less relevant. The complex bureaucratic structure requires managers to retain skills crucial to solve wicked managerial problems (Van der Wal, 2012). Despite this, we assume that

H3: MPP/MPA students have a higher score on public-sector oriented values than MBA students.

H4: MPP/MPA students have a lower score on private-sector oriented values than MBA students.

Background: institutional reform and the study of public policy and administration in Mexico

To understand Mexican public policy and administration graduate programs and training, there is a need to briefly examine the historical and institutional context. This is particularly important in understanding graduate students’ perceptions, their values, and motivation to either work in the public or private sector. Traditionally, Mexico has a relatively low level of public participation and citizen involvement in public affairs. Being the 14^th largest global economy with more than 127 million people in 2015, there have also been a strong distrust of government among its population, especially corruption, electoral frauds, and violent related to drug cartels (^{Benavides et al., 2013}). However, since the early 1980s, the country has experienced institutional reform and a gradual change (see^{Klingner, 2000}; ^{Cabrero, 2005}; ^{Sullivan, 2006}; ^{Cejudo, 2008}; ^{Arellano-Gault, 2013}). After 71 years of single-party government and 12 years of opposition party, the country has been experiencing complex societal changes that struggled with transparency and good governance. For instance, the Civil Service Law enacted in 2003 aimed to eliminate the spoils’ system in Mexico (^{Arellano-Gault, 2013}) and encouraged civic duty and good governance among its citizens and public bureaucracies from the local level to the national administrative bodies.

According to ^{Cejudo (2008)}, “public administration becomes more professional …, it will be necessary to reopen the debate about [institutional] reforms” (p. 124); and the possible linkages between institutional reforms and educational training for future managers and executives. Criticisms of the institutional reform aside (^{Cejudo, 2008}; ^{Arellano-Gault, 2013}), there has been a strong belief that such an overarching goal can be achieved via educational training and professional education. ^{Sullivan (2006)} made a similar argument more than a decade ago: “The democratization and decentralization reforms that have taken place in Mexico have dramatic implications for local governance ... opened opportunities for participatory local governance by … expanding the voice of the people.” (p. 41). The reform inevitably has influenced graduate programs in public policy and administration, especially when the government, since the mid-1990s, “has used some of the tools associated with NPM” (^{Cejudo, 2008, p. 112}).

The institutional reforms in Mexico make it an appropriate backdrop to examine the existence of public and private sector ethos, which may help us understand why graduate students are attractive to one graduate program but not the other. Mexico has one of the largest markets for civil servants and number of master programs offering public policy and administration in Latin America Counties (see^{Purón Cid, 2019}; ^{Sanabria-Pulido et al., 2016}). According to ^{Benavides et al. (2013)}, it was estimated that there were about 5.15 million civil servants in Mexico. About 50.5 percent of civil servants have some types of higher education degree but only 8.35 percent have master and 1.6 percent doctorate degrees. Out of these graduate degrees, about 10.1 percent and 13.9 percent have a master degree and a doctorate degree respectively in the fields of public policy and administration. Nearly a quarter of public officers in Mexico was certified as civil servant in 2011, i.e., out of 36,028 qualified public officers, about 8,500 were certified Civil Servants (^{Arellano-Gault, 2013, p. 945}).

Historically, the creation of public administration and programs in Mexico was largely the responsibility of the National Institute of Public Administration (INAP by its initial in Spanish) and the national schools of political and social sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in the 1950s (see ^{Sánchez, 2009}; ^{Purón Cid, 2019}). Currently, there are about 68 masters’ programs with 1,138 courses in Mexico. Studies have shown that most master programs offering public policy and administration reflect the demand for talented staff and executives, i.e., labor and educational markets (^{Benavides et al. 2013}; ^{Purón Cid, 2019}, ^{Smith et al., 2019}). ^{Benavides et al. (2013)} concluded that, most public policy and administration programs in Mexico were teaching courses that prepared graduates for public services careers. They also taught students on the basic principles of public administration. While there were variations across the region on the types of courses that were being offered, some programs paid less attention on subjects such as ethics and citizen participations, transparency, and government reforms. ^{Smith et al. (2019)} made a similar observation on MPP programs, which emphasis on analytical and evaluative aspects of policy and public programs. Most MPP program tend to focus on economic principles in their public finance and budgeting courses. They concluded that, when assessed against public administration principles such as transparency and accountability, there were still much needed to be done in MPP programs, especially topics related to inequality and re-distributional and social insurance and insecurity, social choice theory.

Given the institutional reforms that occurred in the early 1980s, there have been much changes in the approach in the study of public administration. However, the literature on the effect of institutional reforms on public policy and administration programs has not been clear, especially on graduate students’ perceptions, values, and motivation to work either in the public or private sector. Although some scholars would argue that Mexican public administration culturally has been influenced much by the principles of New Public Management (NPM) movement (^{Cabrero-Mendoza, 2005}; ^{Cabrero-Mendoza, 2000}), others would suggest otherwise (^{Cejudo, 2008}; ^{Arellano-Gault, 2000}; ²⁰¹³). For example, ^{Cabrero (2005)} argued that public officials at the local levels were influenced much by administrative reforms championed by the NPM movement. The core-values of reform and managerial tools, despite their limitations, were introduced in the 1990s; and that, they were increasingly becoming attractive to local managers, an acceptable path to modernization and democratization of municipalities. ^{Cabrero-Mendoza (2000)} argued that, given the decentralization reform, there have been important development at the municipal levels, i.e., new leadership style, broader citizen participation, intergovernmental relations, and new management systems. What does the institutional reform mean for sectoral ethos and graduate program and future training for managers in Mexico?

On the other hand, there have also debated regarding the implementation of NPM in Mexico and its application of managerial tools. Much of the reforms were poorly implemented and the outcomes were mostly symbolic (^{Arellano-Gault, 2000}); and the managerial tools inevitably clash with Mexican organizational culture---shaped much by a long tradition of a patrimonial culture (^{Cejudo, 2008}; ^{Arellano-Gault, 2013}). They also argued that the core-values inherently found in the NPM movement were partly responsible-or at least one of several sources----for the institutional reform in Mexico, i.e., economic liberalization and political democratization (see ^{Cejudo, 2008}). A similar observation was argued by ^{Ibarra-Colado (2007)}, particular in the context of institutional reform in the Mexican higher education system. That is, in the spirit of entrepreneurial public administration, how should universities best confront the multiple challenges of globalization and transformation.

Data collection

Measurements

Work Motivation: In our survey instrument, we have 14 work motivation items. We classified work motivation into two sub-categories because scholars have argued that millennials tended to be motivated to “doing good for society” regardless of which sector they get employed or preferred to work in (^{Holmes-Peters, 2012}; ^{Twenge and Campbell, 2012}). They also tended to have different attitude towards work in general (^{Van der Wal, 2017}). The first sub-category was Ideal Future Job, which included the motivation factors such as “Being Successful”, “Contributing to Society”, “A High Salary”, “Being Service-Oriented Toward Others”, “An Intellectually Stimulating Work Environment”, “Total Commitment to my Employer”, and “Balancing Work and Family Obligations”.

The second sub-category was Professional Career, which included the motivation factors such as “Meaningful public service is very important to me”, “In the years after I graduate, my career will be more important to me than family and friends”, “Considering the welfare of others is very important to me”, “I like to be successful in creating innovative products and services”, “It is best for society when the public sector is responsible for the provision of crucial collective goods, such as energy, public transport and safety”, and “It is best for society when the market is given maximal freedom”. The responses were based on the Likert scale of 1 for “total agreement” and 5 for “total disagreement.” However, to ease interpretations of the final analysis, the responses were recoded, i.e., 1 for totally disagree, 3 for neither agree or disagree, and 5 for totally agree.

Perception on Sectors: We measured students’ perception about the public and private sectors by a set of questionnaire items. For the private sector, graduate students were asked the following three questions: (1) Working for the government means contributing to the society, (2) Working environment in the government is friendlier that in business, and (3) People play “dirty games” to maximize gains. For their perception on the public sector, graduate students were asked the following four questions: (1) Government is bureaucratic, (2) business is more efficient than the government, (3) promotions in business are faster than in government, and (4) employees working in government get caught in the “political web.” The responses were based on the Likert scale of 1 for “total agreement” and 5 for “total disagreement.” The responses were recoded, i.e., 1 for totally disagree, 3 for neither agree or disagree, and 5 for totally agree.

Personal Values: We captured the concept of personal values based on a set of questions from the survey. The literature on the different personal values related to career in the public and private sectors suggests a clear contrast (^{Stackman et al., 2006}; ^{Van der Wal et al., 2008}). The Likert scale consists of minimum 1 for value that was not at all important to the respondents to 10 for value that was very important. We employed exploratory factor analysis with principal components to analyze the data reported on personal values. We found two factors. The first factor was related to “peace”, “equality”, “justice”, and “charity”. The second factor was related to “power”, “achievement”, “change”, and “sacrifice”. Both factors indicate high reliability scores of Cronbach’s Alpha 0.792 and 0.725 respectively. We compared both groups of graduate students’ values by using the program as a control variable. We note that the personal values such as “Fun” and “Prosperity” have lowest factor loadings, with results indicating less than 0.5. Therefore, we did not consider these values in the final analysis because of the potential problem of cross loading among factors that implies lack of reliability.

Work motivations

Our analysis suggests a significant difference on the motivation of employment among graduate students in MPP and MBA programs in the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area Mexico. For example, in Table 2, there were differences between MPP and MBA students with regards to work motivations in organizations (i.e., ideal future job and professional career). The results highlight that graduate students were motivated to work in public organizations; and that, the motivations were based on extrinsic and intrinsic needs. Specifically, we found evidence that MPP students have a stronger motivation to work in the public sector than MBA students. Our analysis provides support for hypothesis 1 and suggests that the MPP students’ ideal future job was based on the nature of employment that can contribute to the society at large (MEAN=4.82, SD=0.405) and whether the employment was orientated toward providing services to the public (MEAN=4.48, SD=0.514). A high salary, however, was reported of greater importance by the MBA students (MEAN=4.41, SD=0.576) compared to the MPP students (MEAN=4.22, SD=0.679).

On the differences related to professional career, we found that MPP students placed items such as meaningful public service (MEAN=4.43, SD=0.74) and public provision of collective goods (MEAN=4.31, SD=867) to be of greater importance. The one PSM item in the survey [“Meaningful public service is important to me”] shows a significant difference between both groups. However, the MBA students tend to report that it is best for society when the market were allowed to operate freely (MEAN=3.51, SD=1.04).

Our results on the differences between MPP and MBA students with regards to work motivations in public organizations was consistent with other studies. Graduate students in MPP programs---similar to the public employees with high score in PSM--- tend to be more likely to aspire to work in the public sector because of the service-sector oriented (^{Piatak, 2016}); and the fact that the public sector would allow them to contribute to society (pro-social behaviors). This was based on the belief that the society would be better off when the public sector is responsible for the provision of collective goods, e.g., energy, public transport and safety. Our finding about MBA students’ preference for extrinsic factors was not surprising.

Future research

Future study can extend to students studying Master of Public Administration (MPA) and Master of Public Affairs (MPAff). Moreover, we have not examined whether students in the MBA and MPP/MPA and their personal values may differ depending on where the programs are located in the business school or public affairs college. While some MPA programs are located independently, others can be found in the business school or located in political science and law schools. Additionally, future research should examine how the disruption and limited socialization during the pandemic affects students’ motivation, values, and interests. Finally, future studies should examine the effect of political climate on graduate student choice of sector employment, particular a shift in the national government policy from a market approach toward state-owned enterprises. This is because, as shown in this study, the differences in sector and employment choice among graduate students are also shaped by motivation, values, and public interests.