Millennials and Public Service Renewal: Introduction on Millennials and Public Service Motivation (Psm)

INTRODUCTIONMany western industrialized countries are experiencing massive retirements as a result of an aging workforce (Van Bavel & Reher, 2013). In North America, post war Baby Boomers are exiting the workforce in large numbers and creating a shortage of skilled workers (Ng, Lyons, & Schweitzer, 2012). Likewise, in Europe, aging workers and mandatory retirement policies are also creating labor market shortages, prompting calls to abolish fixed retirement age policies (Baruch, Sayce, & Gregoriou, 2014). A shortage of skills has important implications for public service renewal as the public sector must compete with private and non-profit employers for the next generation of workers. Although many governments have responded with aggressive immigration policies aimed at boosting the supply of skilled labor (Burke & Ng, 2006), such measures have had limited effectiveness, in light of differences in human capital (education, technical skills, language proficiency) between the immigrants' home and host countries (Chand & Tung, 2014). Consequently, efforts to attract and retain the next cadre of civil servants must be aimed primarily at the domestic Millennial generation.The Millennial generation are those born between 1980 and 1995, and they represent the workforce of the future (Foot & Stoffman, 1998; Zemke, Raines, & Filipczak, 2000). As children of the Baby Boomers, the Millennials have been raised in a relatively middle-class environment (Howe & Strauss, 2000; Twenge 2006, 2010), leading to charges of narcissism, high selfesteem, and a sense of entitlement (Twenge, 2010; Twenge & Campbell, 2008). Recent studies also suggest that the Millennials report a high degree of preference for materialistic rewards, lower concern for others, and espouse lower levels of altruism (Twenge, Campbell, Hoffman, & Lance 2010; Twenge, Campbell, & Freeman, 2012; Twenge & Kasser, 2013), key value preferences which form the motivational bases for public service (Perry, Hondeghem, & Wise, 2010). If these personality traits and work values are accurate (see Lyons & Kuron, 2014, for a review on the evidence of the Millennials' work attitudes), the prospect of attracting the Millennials to public service will be grim and a cause for concern for public service renewal.The objective of this special issue is to investigate whether Millennials are attracted to public service, and if so, to ascertain if they espouse public service motivation (PSM) values known to be predictive of making a career choice in the public sector. This collection draws from research studies conducted in the US, Canada, and Germany, where the average ages of public sector employees are relatively high and massive retirements are looming (OECD, 1999; Van Bavel & Reher, 2013). The four papers examine four key questions: (1) Are Millennials different from Gen Xers with respect to their antecedents to PSM? , (2) Are there Millennials who exhibit PSM values as they have been understood so far? (3) Do PSM values found in Millennials translate into an interest in public sector employment? , and (4) Is PSM related to volunteer behavior among Millennials? Collectively, the findings inform us of changes in attitudes towards public service (if any) with changing generations, and what Millennials possibly prioritize in terms of their career goals and values.CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS AND PUBLIC SERVICE RENEWALAccording to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2014), the median age for government employees in the U.S. is 45.6 years compared to a median age of 42.4 years for workers in other industries. Almost a quarter (23.7%) of public sector employees are aged 55 or older, and expect to retire over the next decade. Likewise in Canada, the average age of civil servants is 44.8 years, and almost one in five (18.5%) expect to retire within the same time period (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2013). The demographic profile is also similar in Germany, where 44. …