Determinants of Turnover Intentions On Federal Employees

JPART 17:235258
Determinants of Bureaucratic Turnover

Intention: Evidence from the Department
of the Treasury
Anthony M. Bertelli
University of Georgia
Downloaded from http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/ at Pennsylvania State University on September 13, 2016

ABSTRACT
This study employs a novel statistical strategy to examine the determinants of turnover
intention in government service. To appropriately measure a main determinant of turnover
intentionfunctional preferencesI estimate an ordinal item response model using data
from the Federal Human Capital Survey. The sample is selected to facilitate an important
comparison: the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has undergone significant performance-
based pay reforms for supervisors, but not for nonsupervisors, whereas the Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), also a subunit of the U.S. Treasury, has not. Inferential
models of turnover intention reveal among other things that functional and friendship solidary
preferences are important determinants of turnover intention, but increased accountability
is associated with greater turnover among subordinates. IRS supervisors, who face payband-
ing, are significantly less likely to consider leaving than their counterparts in the OCC, who do
not face such incentives.
INTRODUCTION
If the personnel function does a good job of selecting bureaucratic agents of the appro-
priate type, then conditions must not be created under which they will leave their jobs.
The myth of low bureaucratic turnover, namely the popular image . . . of someone
tenured for life in a comfortable job, would, if it were true, alleviate concerns of turnover
via incentives owing from Weberian structural design (Stillman 2004, 12). But, the
overall federal employee quit rate was 1.6% in scal year 2004, with 5.4% leaving at
low levels (GS-1 through GS-5) and 1.5% in the remaining levels (GS-6 through GS-15)
as reported by the Ofce of Personnel Management (OPM). Many more employees
anticipate leaving their jobs in government agencies. Across all federal agencies in
2002, more than 34% of employees stated that they are considering leaving the organi-
zation in which they are employed. The extent to which bureaucrats act on this intention
has a critical impact on the federal service and governance. What accounts for turnover
intention?
I would like to thank Shawn Treier, Hal Rainey, Laurence OToole, J. Edward Kellough, Andrew Whitford, and an
anonymous reviewer for helpful discussions. David Ballard and Ellen Rubin provided invaluable research assistance.
Address correspondence to the author at bertelli@uga.edu.
doi:10.1093/jopart/mul003
Advance Access publication on August 9, 2006
The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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236 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory
The costs of designing and operating a selection procedure as large as that in the U.S.
federal government are certainly consequential, and turnover thus represents lost invest-
ment. Employees accumulate both general and bureau-specic human capital (e.g., idio-
syncratic knowledge, social networks) valuable to the agency in which the bureaucrat is
employed (cf. Jovanovic 1979; Deere 1987). Workers can extract rents for this human
capital from the government to forestall their turnover. This is particularly the case when
private sector concerns value the bureaucrats stock of human capital for leverage against
regulators, knowledge of administrative processes in which they participate, and so forth.
Unlike the case of employees in the competitive rm (Milgrom and Roberts 1992, 345),
there is substantial market demand for bureau-specic human capital in the form of the

revolving door between public agencies and private rms. Beyond all this, the work of
Brehm and Gates (1997) suggests an additional cost from turnover that accrues to demo-
cratic governance. In surmounting the adverse selection problem for supervisors (by
choosing subordinates having preferences for longer service in public organizations),
agency loss is mitigated at the highest level: Congress may then legislate policies that fall
to managers who have a team of subordinates that will comply with such initiatives. Thus,
nested in the problem of legislative delegation is the problem of keeping subordinates
satised.
Part of public employees satisfaction with and attachment to their jobs seems tied to
a notion of public service motivation. Perry and Wise (1990) argue that such motives can
be explained by bureaucrats desire to be instrumental in policy formation, to generally
serve the public, and/or out of particular attachments to the goals and importance of the
public policies they implement. Perry (1996) provides survey-based evidence of the prev-
alence of such values among bureaucrats. Gailmard (2001) considers ideological satisfac-
tion with the goals of public sector employers formally, showing that diverging preferences
between bureaucrats and legislators create the incentives for bureaucrats to acquire more
policy expertise, and consequently for legislators to delegate less policy making authority.
His model suggests that instrumental motives of bureaucrats identied by Perry and
Wise (1990) can help or hinder legislative initiatives depending on the correspondence
between policy orientations of legislators and bureaucrats (see, e.g., Golden 2000, chap. 6,
on the Reagan administrations policy changes in the Environmental Protection Agency).
The implications of such conicts are consistent with empirical evidence, as noted by
Rainey (1997, 217), public service motivation . . . appears to vary over time, with changes
in the public image of government service, and to take different forms in different agencies
and service areas. Though motivation toward public service most probably contributes to
turnover intention, it is also likely to be embedded in the intrinsic motivation of bureaucrats
toward and satisfaction with the jobs they hold.
It is surely unsurprising that government employees might leave primarily because
they simply do not like the jobs they do. Brehm and Gates (1997) provide evidence that the
strongest effect on bureaucratic policy choices is exerted by the functional (drawn from
aspects of the job performed) and solidary (drawn from association with coworkers)
preferences of bureaucrats themselves. When bureaucrats functional preferences are in-
congruous with the job, they are more likely to leave, impacting public policy making.
Functional preferences have theoretical roots in the literature of organization behavior,
social psychology, and personnel economics, and measurement of these theoretical con-
cepts is critical to understanding turnover intention for two reasons: (a) it is anticipated to
be a primary determinant of such intention and (b) appropriate measurement of this critical
Bertelli Determinants of Bureaucratic Turnover Intention 237
concept permits the effects of other factors to be more meaningfully partialled out. To this
end, I estimate a measurement model of functional preferences based on the theoretical
literatures on intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction. The recovered measure is then used
in a model of turnover intention.
To generate a statistical measure of functional preference, I estimate an ordinal re-
sponse model using six questions from the 2002 Federal Human Capital Survey (FHCS)
for two related concepts from organizational psychology, job involvement and intrinsic
motivation (collectively, JIM). With an appropriate measure of functional preferences in
hand, I examine turnover intention as a function of JIM, pay quality, solidary preferences,
and competing explanations discussed in the literature on public employee turnover. Turn-

over intention was addressed in question 98 of the 2002 FHCS, which asks Are you
considering leaving your organization? This provides the dependent variable for the
inferential models.
Seeking a balance between worker satisfaction and performance has spawned inno-
vations in public sector human resource management. Pay-for-performance has been
widely implemented, or at least attempted in a variety of settings (see, e.g., U.S. Ofce
of Personnel Management 2002; U.S. Government Accountability Ofce 2003). In the
federal government, the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act established a pay-for-performance
plan for midlevel managers and supervisors. However, this effort was discontinued after
numerous studies found that the pay scheme did not improve motivation or increase
employee satisfaction, nor did employees believe that their agencies were performing
better because of the reward structure (Kellough and Lu 1993; Rainey and Kellough
2000). In another example, Georgia State employees reported widespread skepticism of
a pay-for-performance system (Kellough and Nigro 2005). At times, then, well-intentioned
efforts have run counter to expectations and may have an impact on turnover intention.
Yet, its effect in the federal service and in many areas remains an empirical question. The
research design employed here provides leverage on this question as well. By focusing on
two subagencies of the U.S. Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which has
implemented an unique paybanding system for its supervisory employees, and the Ofce
of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which has not implemented such reforms
for either supervisors or subordinates, I examine differences in the determinants of turn-
over intention at supervisory and subordinate levels and paybanded and nonpaybanded
supervisors.
In the next section, I review the performance reforms in the IRS and discuss the
OCC as a comparison group. I then discuss the measurement model for functional
preferences, presenting technical material in an appendix. A review of the turnover
intention literature in public organizations follows, and hypotheses are constructed.
Turnover intention is then analyzed with probit regression models, and the results are
presented and discussed. The paper concludes with some remarks on the implications of
the empirical ndings.
PAY-FOR-PERFORMANCE REFORMS AND THE U.S. TREASURY

Concentrating on the Department of the Treasury provides a unique opportunity to gauge
the effect of pay-for-performance reforms on turnover intention. Performance measure-
ment and accountability in the IRS, a subunit of Treasury, entered the public debate in
September 1997, when disgruntled taxpayers and IRS employees told stories of harangue
and procedural unfairness to the Senate Finance Committee during high-prole hearings.
The resulting IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1997 (RRA) required the agency to
manage its human capital by balancing customer service ideals with tax administration
responsibilities (Public Law 105-206, July 22, 1998). Specically, the 1997 Act provided
the agency broad authority to develop compensation and hiring exibilities not normally
available under civil service rules. The IRS responded by empowering managers with more
discretion for rewarding high performers and, more generally, holding employees account-
able for all levels of performance (U.S. Government Accountability Ofce 2003). Replac-
ing a portion of the General Schedule with a broad-banding pay scale and revising position

classications, the IRS centered its reforms on performance management (Thompson and
Rainey 2003).
Specically, the IRS senior manager payband consolidated the GS-14 and GS-15
salary grades and imposed the following logic of promotion on managers in the new band.
Managers may only progress along the step-in-grade hierarchy established within the
payband if their performance rating meets certain thresholds, and these standards increase
as managers move higher in the payband.1 The payband system was extended to GS-11
through GS-13 employees in the IRS service and call centers nationwide, resulting in
a single department manager grade with 16 steps for promotion based on performance
(Thompson and Rainey 2003, 37). When coupled with the paybanding system imple-
mented for IRS supervisory employees and subordinate customer service demands follow-
ing the 1997 Senate hearings, merit assessments for salary increases are expected to have
an impact on turnover intention. Brehm and Gates (1997, Table C2) included similar
variables in their strength of supervision scale, though the IRS incentive scheme makes
it important to consider them separately. Wilson (1989, 159) considers the IRS a pro-
duction agency, namely one characterized by the observability of both organizational
outputs and outcomes. Specically, it is possible to observe the activities of [IRS] clerks
and auditors and can measure the amount of money collected in taxes (p. 160). With
respect to managing the performance of these agencies, a form of Greshams Law
operates, whereby work that produces measurable outcomes tends to drive out work that
produces unmeasurable outcomes (p. 161). This phenomenon, for example, can lead the
auditors to become so zealous in auditing that they annoy taxpayers who feel they are being
treated unfairly or hounded about minor errors (p. 161). As a consequence, customer
service performance ratings fall, as does job satisfaction. Performance incentives must be
carefully designed in such settings, and as the evidence presented below suggests, the IRS
may not be doing so.
Since the perception that rewards are operating properly is important in understanding
the responses of IRS employees, I state the following hypothesis.
1 For example, managers can move from step 1 to step 2 with two met expectations ratings over a two-year salary
review period but can move from step 9 to step 10 only with a combination of exceeded and outstanding
performance ratings over two years (Thompson and Rainey 2003, 36). Performance ratings entitle the manager to
greater shares of the bonus award pool (2% of aggregate senior managerial salaries); 90% of these funds are allocated to
performance bonuses, whereas the remaining 10% is retained in a special act pool (Thompson and Rainey 2003, 37).
H1 Perceptions of Performance-Enhancing Rewards Decrease the Likelihood of

Turnover Intention
This claim is assessed through a number of FHCS items. Four items concern the bureau-
crats perception of his or her own performance evaluation and the incentive scheme he or
she faces.
Q16: Selections for promotions in my work unit are based on merit.
Q32: High-performing employees in my workgroup are recognized or rewarded on
a timely basis.

Q35: My performance appraisal is a fair reection of my performance.
Q36: Our organizations awards program provides me with an incentive to do my best.
Accountability for results is important, as it measures bureaucrats perceived respon-

siveness to stated performance objectives. Question 39 states I am held accountable for
achieving results. Each item permits responses on the ve-point agreement scale from 1
(strongly disagree) through 5 (strongly agree). Knowledge of employment benets is also
relevant. Awareness of the availability of benets other than pay can also make a differ-
ence, and question 4 asks whether I am kept informed about changes in personnel policies
and employee benets.
Supervisory employees in the IRS face a high-powered performance regime, whereas
OCC supervisors and nonsupervisors in both units do not. Nonetheless, subordinates,
such as auditors and clerks, nd themselves responding to customer service incentives
in the wake of the 1997 Senate hearings and are given increased managerial exibility
under the RRA over previous restrictions in Title 5 of the U.S. Code. As a consequence,
performance-based rewards affect all IRS employees, but their impact can be expected to
differ on the basis of supervisory status and between the two agencies.
In the 2002 FHCS, OPM asked respondents to identify their supervisory status. The
response options were nonsupervisor (You do not supervise other employees), team
leader (You provide employees with day-to-day guidance in conducting work projects,
but do not perform supervisory responsibilities and are not an ofcial supervisor), super-
visor (You are a supervisor of employees, but you do not supervise any other super-
visors), manager (You supervise one or more supervisors), and executive (Member of
the Senior Executive Service or Equivalent). Each of these terms was dened for respond-
ents as above in the survey instrument. In the data set provided to the public, OPM recoded
this data to protect the privacy of individual respondents. The responses of those indicating
nonsupervisor and team leader status were recoded by OPM as nonsupervisors; those
indicating supervisor, manager, and executive status were recoded by OPM as super-
visors. This variable is used as an indicator of supervisory status. The recoding that was
performed for condentiality is unfortunate in that it makes it impossible for me to identify
only the senior managers in the IRS. Nonetheless, this rougher measure provides signif-
icant analytical traction.
The OCC is included in this study as a control group for examining the effect of
perceptions of the management incentives unique to the IRS. OCC, located with the IRS
in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, is the regulator of U.S. banks, and its employees
engage in similar accounting oversight (i.e., auditing) as that performed by the IRS at
the bank rather than at the individual and corporate levels. Both subagencies have
a nationwide staff, and their employees possess generally similar backgrounds in ac-
counting and nancial matters.2 If there are unobserved attributes correlated with the
responses to questions regarding performance incentives specic to the IRS, they can
reasonably be addressed by the comparison between results for IRS and OCC super-
visors. Among those attributes is the paybanding system. In the absence of questions
related specically to paybanding to facilitate a direct test, comparison of these groups is
suggestive evidence of the effect of paybanding on bureaucrats intent to leave their
jobs. When combined with the information included in survey responses, this compar-
ison provides signicant leverage in understanding the effects of performance incentives
on turnover intention.

FUNCTIONAL PREFERENCE AS A LATENT VARIABLE
If the onus of personnel reforms, perceptions of pay quality, and other considerations are
to be accurately assessed as determinants of turnover intention, an appropriate statistical
measure of bureaucrats functional preferences is required. Two theoretical sources of
functional preferences have been examined in the literature on personnel economics and
organizational behavior. First, the degree to which individuals take pleasure from the very
tasks that they perform affects their output. In the language of economic theory, the task
that a bureaucrat performs may be seen as a functional argument in determining the
(dis)utility that bureaucrat derives from exerting effort on behalf of the government em-
ployer (Murdock 2002, 650). Task (job) involvement is related to the onerousness of a task,
that is, ling papers might compel an individual to exhibit lower task involvement than
project planning. In the measurement model, this type of functional preference is examined
through survey responses to questions similar to those on the job identication index of
Lodahl and Kejner (1965).
A second type of functional preference has to do with the degree to which attaining
specic job-related goals takes on an instrumental value and become[s] intrinsically
rewarding (Galbraith 1977, 336).3 This type of functional preference is tied to the goals
of the organization in which the bureaucrat is employed. When those goals are embraced
by the bureaucrat, it may be expected that their attainment creates some value for him or
her apart from any extrinsic inducements such as pay. This is tantamount to what has been
called warm-glow altruism, and experiments employing task framing have shown that
the warm-glow of creating a positive externality appears to be stronger than the cold-
prickle of creating a negative externality (Andreoni 1995, 2). Frey and Oberholzer-Gee
(1997, 7467) write, [i]f a person derives intrinsic benets simply by behaving in an
2 For example, according to recruitment materials on their respective Web sites, entry-level OCC bank examiners
should have undertaken a four-year course of study leading to a bachelors degree with major study in accounting,
banking, business administration, commercial or banking law, economics, nance, marketing, or other eld closely
related to the position, whereas entry-level IRS agents should have earned either a four-year degree or experience
along with 30 semester hours of accounting coursework.
3 Social psychologists and economists have examined a possible crowding-out effect operating on intrinsic
motivation in the presence of high-powered incentives, such as performance-based pay scales, which further suggests
a relationship between functional preferences and turnover intention through job satisfaction (see, e.g., Deci and Ryan
1985; Frey 1994; Kreps 1997).
altruistic manner or by living up to her civic duty, paying her for this service reduces her
option of indulging in altruistic feelings.4 This form of functional preference is measured
in the subsequent model through responses to questions related to the intrinsic motivation
scale of Lawler and Hall (1970). Higher levels of both intrinsic motivation and job in-
volvement are expected to decrease turnover intention.
Responses to survey questions are commonly modeled as partial manifestations of
a latent random variable with hidden realization. In the present case, an estimate of JIM is
a hypothetical construct that cannot be directly measured in principle (Torgerson 1958).
Recent work on the ideal point problem takes a Bayesian approach, where the latent
quantity of interest as well as the model parameters are random variables, and estimation

is performed by Markov chain Monte Carlo methods (e.g., Martin and Quinn 2002;
Clinton, Jackman, and Rivers 2004). My approach is to treat the latent functional prefer-
ence as a random variable with the remaining parameters in an item response model xed,
maximizing the marginal likelihood function, that is, the likelihood of the response given
the data and parameters (see, e.g., Zorn and Caldiera 2003). A closed-form solution for the
latent quantity being absent, the integration is performed by numerical methods (Skrondal
and Rabe-Hesketh 2004, 159).
The data are drawn from the 2002 FHCS, administered by the OPM between May and
August 2002.5 The purpose of this survey was to assess the degree to which federal
agencies are using human capital management practices that characterize high-performing
organizations and to provide managers with information on workforce issues that deserve
specic attention. In all, 200,000 employees in the executive branch were selected for
inclusion in a stratied random sample. The response rate was 51%. Survey data were
collected for 189 separate organizational units across the federal government, and these
units encompass 93% of the executive branch workforce.6 I use only the responses of IRS
and OCC employees in the principal analysis.
OPM has conducted surveys similar to the FHCS for decades, and prior versions were
used by Brehm and Gates (1997) in assessing the functional and solidary preferences of
federal bureaucrats. Chun and Rainey (2005) examined goal conict in federal agencies
using the same survey implementation drawn upon in the principal analysis. Crewson
4 Murdock (2002) has shown formally that equilibrium wage contracts that include some intrinsic motivation
component are able to exploit intertemporal gains from trade. Suppose that a bureaucrat manages projects. The agency
may commit in period t to engaging in a type of project that the bureaucrat is intrinsically motivated to perform in return
for the bureaucrats hard work on such projects in period t 1 (relative to those which have no intrinsic value for the
bureaucrat).
5 The data are available at http://www.fhcs.opm.gov/2002fhcsdata.htm.
6 The survey was administered electronically, but those employees requesting a paper survey to complete were
provided with an instrument. Survey participants were stratied according their supervisory status. Response data was
also weighted to account for over- and under-representation according to gender, age, and minority status to ensure the
data reects the demographics of the federal workforce. According to OPM, [i]n addition to using stratied random
sampling techniques, we employed a second means of ensuring a representative data set. Because of the differing
response rates among the various demographic groups completing the survey, the data were weighted to further ensure
that the results are statistically unbiased. In this way adjustments to response rates could be made to account for over-
and under-represented groups within the sample. For example, gender, age and agency of respondents do not exactly
reect their actual distribution in the federal workforce. Or in the case of supervisors and executives, response levels are
overrepresented due to stratied random sampling techniques. Weighting ensures that the demographic make-up of the
federal workforce is reected in the nal data set, from which the overall results reported here are taken. Stratied
random sampling, use of weighting procedures to ensure a representative sample, and a large sample size all combine to
maximize condence in the statistical ndings. (U.S. Ofce of Personnel Management 2003, 11).
(1995) used a previous survey to understand nonmonetary motivations of federal employees

and found that public sector employees who are more motivated by extrinsic rewards
exhibited less organizational commitment. Daley (1992) examined job satisfaction using
data from a previous FHCS.
Six items relating to JIM were used in the measurement model described below.7
Each item permits responses on a ve-point agreement scale: 1 (strongly disagree),
2 (disagree), 3 (neither agree nor disagree), 4 (agree), and 5 (strongly agree).
Q11 My talents are used well in the workplace.
Q13 I recommend my organization as a good place to work.

Q19 The work I do is important.
Q21 Employees have a feeling of empowerment and ownership of work processes.
Q56 My work gives me a feeling of personal accomplishment.
Q57 I like the kind of work I do.
Lawler and Hall (1970) developed a set of questions that they considered to be useful
for tapping into employees sense of intrinsic motivation or the motivating effects of the
work itself (Rainey 1997, 202). Q56 is very similar to their sample question, When I do
my work well, it gives me a feeling of personal accomplishment, Q21 asks this question
in a somewhat different way, whereas Q57 is closest in spirit to I feel a great sense of
personal satisfaction when I do my job well (Rainey 1997, 202). The remaining questions
are included to capture a sense of job involvement (Lodahl and Kejner 1965) or the extent
to which an employee considers his work important and absorbing (Rainey 1997, 202).
Q19 addresses this issue directly, whereas Q11 and Q13 reach the issue in a somewhat
different manner. From the response scale described above, it is clear that each question
is coded in such a way that higher values are associated conceptually with greater levels
of JIM. Because the problems sparseness can induce for ordinal modeling, the categories
disagree and strongly disagree in the original survey results were merged due to
sparseness in the strongly disagree category. Thus, the responses examined in the
measurement model are four-category ordinal responses.
The data are modeled with an ordinal, two-parameter item response model. For
j 5 1; . . . ; n individuals responding to i 5 1; . . . ; m survey items, the item response theory
(IRT) framework we employ posits that the latent response to question i is driven by a
latent propensity uj such that
y*ij 5 ai bi uj eij ; 1
where each item has a difculty (ai) and a discrimination (bi) parameter. A technical
discussion of the measurement model appears in the Appendix, and estimation results
are presented in table 1.
Question 56 (My work gives me a feeling of personal accomplishment) does the
best job of discriminating between lower and higher levels of functional preference. All
7 Though Brehm and Gates (1997, Table C2) include a broader range of questions in their factor-analytic measure
of functional preferences than in the scale developed in this section, my intent is to tie functional preference more
directly to the most relevant social psychological theories of work motivation, theories of JIM.
Table 1
Parameter Estimates for the IRT Measurement Model
Parameter Estimate SE
Difculty parameters
a1: Q11 0
a2: Q13 0.049 0.040
a3: Q19 0.910 0.048
a4: Q21 0.862 0.047
a5: Q56 0.224 0.034
a6: Q57 0.649 0.041

Discrimination parameters
b1: Q11 1
b2: Q13 0.813 0.036
b3: Q19 0.712 0.033
b4: Q21 0.737 0.035
b5: Q56 1.074 0.038
b6: Q57 0.889 0.036
Natural log of scale parameters
ln s1: Q11 0
ln s2: Q13 0.053 0.039
ln s3: Q19 0.159 0.041
ln s4: Q21 0.014 0.041
ln s5: Q56 0.775 0.077
ln s6: Q57 0.292 0.044
Cut points
k1 1.298 0.055
k2 0.607 0.045
k3 1.248 0.055
Variance estimate for b1
Var(b1) 1.571 0.133
N 11,030
Log-likelihood 6,335.791
questions are, as anticipated, positively associated with JIM as responses move from
disagreement to agreement.8 The difculty parameter for question 13 is not statistically
signicant, but all other parameters achieve signicance at p . .05.
Figure 1 depicts the distribution of JIM for the full sample. The shading represents the
individual-level uncertainty estimates (6 standard deviations of the empirical posterior
distribution based on the parameter estimates). As described in the Appendix, these are
expected values from the posterior distribution of the latent trait (functional preferences)
8 As a simple check on face validity, I correlate the functional preference (JIM) estimates with responses to
other questions on the survey with anticipated directions. Responses to question 23 (I hold my organizations leaders
in high regard) are correlated with the JIM measure at a level of .590, whereas responses to question 55 (My job
makes good use of my skills and abilities) are correlated with JIM at .776. Responses to question 98 (Are you
considering leaving your organization?), the dependent variable in my subsequent analyses, which takes a value
of 1 if the answer is Yes and 0 for No, is negatively correlated with JIM as anticipated (.314).
Figure 1
Functional Preference (JIM) Scale with Error Estimates

and can thus be considered to lie within a condence band unlike frequentist parameter
estimates. The graph shows no extremely large measurement error estimates with each
error estimate being roughly equivalent in size.
Having developed a measure of functional preferences, I now turn to the construction
of hypotheses and inferential models for examining turnover intention.
DETERMINANTS OF TURNOVER INTENTION

The scholarly consensus holds that undesirable aspects of a job, disruptive organizational
politics, bad management, and negative individual attitudes lead to low job satisfaction (e.g.,
Ting 1997). The general argument postulates a cost-benet analysis: When the perceived
benets of holding a job (decreasing as a function of the foregoing considerations) exceed
the perceived costs of quitting, employees announce the intent to turnover. Bureaucrats
attitudes toward their jobs are reected in functional preferences (Brehm and Gates 1997).
Rainey (1991, 148) notes that job satisfaction has been shown to be strongly related to the
expressed intention of turnover. As my estimate of functional preferences, JIM, increases,
so does job satisfaction, which can logically be associated with lower turnover intention.
Solidary preferences are also theoretically important as determinants of turnover
intention (Brehm and Gates 1997), and I employ two forms. When a bureaucrat likes
his or her coworkers, an environment is created that can be termed friendship solidarity,
whereas satisfaction with quality work that ones coworkers perform is known as pro-
duction solidarity. Brehm and Gates (1997, Table C2) include both forms of solidarity in
their factor-analytic scales of solidary preferences. It is anticipated that these solidary
preference effects are inuential on turnover, over and above the effect of JIM.9
H2 Both Friendship and Production Solidarity Are Associated with Lower Turnover
Friendship solidarity is measured by responses to question 12 This is a friendly place
to work. Answers are permitted along the ve-point agreement scale. Two items on the
9 Correlations between the JIM estimates and solidary factors do not raise multicollinearity concerns. JIM is
correlated with question 12 at r 5 .53, with question 37 at r 5 .38, and with question 61 at r 5 .49.
FHCS are used as measures of production solidarity. Question 61 asks How would you
rate the overall quality of work done by your workgroup? and permits responses along the
quality scale of 1 (very poor) through 5 (very good). Question 37 addresses low performers
in the workforce (In my work unit, steps are taken to deal with a poor performer who
cannot or will not improve) with responses along the ve-point agreement scale.
Pay is inarguably important to turnover in either the private or public sectors. The
well-known Volcker Commission report emphasized this problem, concluding that relative
pay differentials between the federal and private sectors created signicant difculty for
recruitment, selection, and retention of high-quality federal employees (National Commis-
sion on the Public Service 1989). Lewis (1991, 147) nds that a full 57% of Senior

Executive Supervisors in the federal service left because of the Federal Pay Gap,
the availability of larger salaries in the private sector for comparable work. Additionally,
Lewis notes that 66% of the thousands of federal employees, whose personnel les he
examined, stated that better pay in the private sector was a important consideration in their
decision to leave.10
H3 Dissatisfaction with Pay Increases the Likelihood of Turnover Intention
Question 58 of the FHCS asks How do you rate the amount of pay you get on your
job? and permits responses along a quality scale: 1 (very poor), 2 (poor), 3 (fair), 4 (good),
5 (very good). This variable constitutes my measure of perceived pay quality.
Clear work expectations are desired by public employees. Wright and Davis (2003,
74) note that as employees understand more clearly what is expected of them, tensions
lessen greatly. An employee who feels comfortable with his or her job and understands
how work quality is evaluated is less likely to announce turnover intention than when
expectations are unclear. Nonetheless, Wright and Davis (2003) also nd that public
employees do not want a job that is too routine. Opportunities for promotion have also
been shown to be correlated with turnover intention. A recent study nds evidence that the
failure to promote a public employee over a period of time leads to a high degree of stress
and collaterally, disappointment, that can lead to voluntary turnover (Ito 2003, 1).
Job burnout has also been shown to be associated with turnover intention. Huang,
Jason Chung, and Lin (2003, 519) employed the Burnout Inventory developed by Maslach
and Jackson (a measure of exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced professional efcacy) to
examine this effect. Ferris, Russ, and Fandt (1989) suggested that, burnout can be linked to
organizational politics such as inuence activity (e.g., Milgrom and Roberts 1988). The
desire of an employee to keep from being outmaneuvered by his or her colleagues causes
stress because of the personal emotions involved, likewise contributing to turnover in-
tention. Ezra and Deckman (1996) show the effects of the balance between work and other
aspects of life (i.e., family) on job satisfaction.
H4 Burnout Is Positively Associated with Turnover Intention
10 The local cost of living potentially matters as it affects employees real wage levels. Nonetheless, Lewis
(1991, 371) nds that interarea pay differentials have only a limited impact on turnover intention. Given the available
data, my hypothesis is constructed more generally.
Two questions are used to assess this hypothesis. Question 9 states My supervisor
supports my need to balance work and family issues whereas question 10 is simply
My workload is reasonable. Each response is permitted on the agreement scale from
1 (strongly disagree) through 5 (strongly agree). Disagreement with both is anticipated
to increase the probability that a public employee wishes to leave his or her job.
Turnover intention may also be linked with bureaucrats perception of management
quality. Kahn and others (1964) noted that role senders such as managers create sets of
expectations for employees through both formal and informal processes they design and
require. Imposing such expectations increases stress among employees, leading to a desire
to leave their jobs. Brehm and Gates (1997, 101) show a positive relationship between

perceptions of managerial quality and levels of work performed by federal bureaucrats.
Kim (2005) suggests that participation in management decisions enhances bureaucrats
perceptions of managerial actions and directives. Comparisons with what these employees
feel, which is more exibility in the private sector, might trigger this effect.
H5 As Perceived Management Quality Decreases, Turnover Intention Increases
Question 60 asks Overall, how good a job do you feel is being done by your
immediate supervisor/team leader? with ratings permitted from 1 (very poor) through 5
(very good). Question 2 states Managers review and evaluate the organizations progress
toward meeting its goals and objectives; question 22 asks whether Supervisors/team
leaders are receptive to change; and question 23 is more general (I hold my organiza-
tions leaders in high regard). Each permits answers along the ve-point agreement scale.
Bureaucrats whose personal goals conict with an organizations objectives are also
more likely to quit than those who believe in the organizations mission. For Brehm and
Gates (1997, 30), goal and mission conicts between public organizations and bureaucrats
compels dissent shirking, which stems directly from an organization members oppo-
sition to some policy. Though they are concerned with the manifestations of dissent
shirking in the form of failures to work and sabotage, conicts can be logically anticipated
to predict turnover intention. This is consistent with the instrumental component of public
service motivation described by Perry and Wise (1990) as well as the formal analysis of
sabotage in Gailmard (2001). Those disgruntled employees who do not see the benets of
sabotage or slow down on the job, as outweighing the costs will simply exercise their exit
option and leave the organization. This is a form of the exit-voice tradeoff that has been
examined in labor economics (Hirschman 1970; see, e.g., Freeman 1980; Freeman and
Medoff 1984).
Other demographic data, including location (headquarters vs. eld), length of service
with current agency, and retirement intentions were not included in the public data set.
Individual characteristics such as education are likewise and unfortunately not available.
Thus, I am only able to control for the effects of gender and minority status. Aggregate quit
rates in the federal service are generally higher for men than women, and this effect has
been attributed to family commitments and the historically disproportionate concentration
of women in lower paying jobs (Kellough and Osuna 1995, 60). Blau and Kahn (1981)
found that African Americans quit at lower rates than whites in the private sector and argue
that this is due to the presence of labor market discrimination (which may also attach to
women). Turnover intention is, of course, speculative, and effects on intention versus
actual quit rates may be exaggerated due to the presence of imperfect information about
market opportunities (Holmund and Lang 1985).
Table 2
Summary Statistics
Variable Mean SD N
Turnover intention 0.245 0.430 1,842
JIM 0 1.175 1,842
Quality of pay 3.635 1.003 1,842
Friendly workplace 3.925 1.003 1,842
Quality of immediate supervisor 3.877 1.013 1,842
Quality of workgroup output 4.163 0.706 1,842
Managerial review of goals & evaluation 3.073 1.147 1,842

Information regarding benet changes 3.439 1.080 1,842
Supervisors receptive to change 3.873 0.914 1,783
Hold leaders in high regard 3.201 1.163 1,838
Reasonable workload 3.328 1.212 1,841
Work-life balance supported 4.010 0.987 1,831
Promotions are merit based 3.320 1.179 1,797
Timely rewards for high performance 3.414 1.136 1,798
Appraisal reects performance 3.660 1.028 1,831
Awards incentivize high performance 2.820 1.154 1,835
Poor performance is addressed 3.014 1.163 1,737
Accountability for results 4.026 0.758 1,838
Minority 0.263 0.441 1,842
Male 0.520 0.500 1,842
Supervisor 0.370 0.483 1,842
Probit regressions with Huber-White-Sandwich robust standard errors are used to

generate the estimates discussed in the next section.11 In each model, the dependent vari-
able measuring turnover intention is the response vector for question 98 of the 2002 FHCS,
which asks Are you considering leaving your organization? Summary statistics appear
in table 2.
RESULTS
As anticipated, functional preferences have a signicant and large impact on turnover
intention. Table 3 presents the results for the full sample of IRS bureaucrats. Functional
preferences (JIM), perceived quality of pay, friendship solidarity, but not production
solidarity, are all signicantly associated with a lower likelihood of announcing turnover
intent. Simulating the posterior distribution of turnover intention permits a fuller descrip-
tion of these effects (King, Tomz, and Wittenberg 2000).12 Maximum JIM is associated
11 To ensure against possible bias from turnover intention as a rare event, I also ran the models using
a complimentary log-log link. The estimates are very similar. In the full sample, where announced turnover
intention occurs in 25% of the full sample, no substantive differences are seen in the alternative specication
except that question 37 (poor performance is addressed) is weakly signicant (z 5 1.70) in the anticipated negative
direction reported in table 3. No substantive effects are demonstrated in the alternative models for supervisors
(21% turnover intention) and nonsupervisors (27% turnover intention).
12 Using the King, Tomz, and Writtenberg (2000) CLARIFY routine for STATA 9.1, I drew 1,000 simulations of the
parameters in each model presented in tables 35 from their asymptotic distribution (multivariate normal with
mean at the parameter estimate and variance equivalent to the variance-covariance matrix of the estimates).
Table 3
Probit Regression Results for Determinants of Turnover Intention, All IRS and OCC Employees, 2002
Variable Coefcient Robust SE
Functional preferences (JIM) 0.286** 0.047
Friendly workplace 0.159** 0.048
Quality of workgroup output 0.014 0.063
Poor performance is addressed 0.049 0.037
Quality of pay 0.114** 0.041
Quality of immediate supervisor 0.007 0.050
Managerial review of goals and

evaluation 0.085 0.050
Supervisors receptive to change 0.002 0.044
Hold leaders in high regard 0.051 0.044
Reasonable workload 0.085** 0.036
Work-life balance supported 0.078 0.046
Promotions are merit based 0.024 0.043
Timely rewards for high performance 0.059 0.045
Appraisal reects performance 0.007 0.047
Awards incentivize high performance 0.080 0.067
Accountability for results 0.159** 0.057
Information regarding benet changes 0.010 0.045
Minority 0.047 0.089
Male 0.157* 0.077
Supervisor 0.127 0.084
IRS employee 0.098 0.081
Intercept 0.076 0.380
N 1,635
Log-pseudolikelihood 781.363
x221 205.82**
Percent correctly classied 78%
AIC 0.983
Note: Signicance levels 10%, *5%, and **1%.
with only a 7% likelihood of announcing turnover intention, with a 95% chance that this
probability will lie between 4% and 10% (condence intervals are hereinafter reported in
brackets). However, an employee in either the IRS or OCC having the lowest functional
preferences is associated with a full 52% [.40, .63] probability of stating the intent to leave
his or her position. Pay quality is also an important factor as expected. Those most
dissatised with their pay have a likelihood of intending to turnover of 31% [.23, .37]
compared with only 17% [.14, .21] for those most satised.
Friendship solidarity also has an impact on turnover intention. Minimal satisfaction
with the friendliness of a workgroup is associated with 37% [.27, .47] likelihood of
turnover intention, whereas those most satised are only 16% [.13, .20] likely to want to
leave their jobs. Neither measure of production solidarity has a statistically signicant
effect on turnover intention.
One management variable has a weak but signicant effect on turnover intention in
the full sample, and this effect is in the opposite direction as anticipated. When employees
strongly believe that management reviews and evaluates the goals of the organization, they
stand a 24% [.20, .28] chance of announcing turnover intention, yet a weak belief in such
evaluation decreases the odds to 15% [.09, .23]. Note the nontrivial overlap in the con-
dence intervals and signicance at only the .10 threshold, suggesting caution in interpreting
this effect.
The burnout hypothesis (H4) receives support, though with an intriguing caveat.
Perceptions of a reasonable workload are signicant and negatively related to turnover
intention. Strong disagreement with this proposition is associated with a 27% [.22, .33]
likelihood of announcing the intent to leave their jobs, whereas those who most strongly
agree have only a 17% [.14, .22] probability of doing so. The positive effect of supervisory
respect of work-life balance on turnover intention is counterintuitive. This effect seems
weak in both signicance and impact. Those bureaucrats feeling most strongly that work-

life balance is not being supported by their supervisors but still strongly believe that their
workload is reasonable have only a 19% [.15, .23] probability of announcing turnover
intention. This can be compared with the 17% effect of reasonable workload alone as
mentioned above.
Two items related to pay-for-performance are also signicantly related to turnover
intention in the full sample of IRS and OCC employees. When bureaucrats feel most
strongly that rewards create the incentive for them to perform at high levels, I observe
a weakly signicant decrease in the likelihood that they consider leaving their jobs. How-
ever, a strong effect, counter to expectations (H1), occurs when these employees strongly
feel that they are being held accountable for the achievement of results. In this case, IRS
and OCC bureaucrats are fully 26% [.22, .30] likely to announce turnover intention, but
only 10% [.05, .17] likely to do so when they strongly disagree with the assertion that they
confront such accountability. When a strong feeling of accountability for results is com-
bined with a strong belief that performance incentives exist, this likelihood drops to 21%
[.15, .27], a signicant reduction. Accountability for results matched with strong disbelief
in the operation of performance incentives is associated with a 31% [.24, .38] likelihood of
turnover intention.
All else equal, men are more likely than women to announce turnover intention, but
no statistically signicant difference is exhibited between IRS and OCC employees in the
full sample. Since IRS supervisors face different performance incentives than nonsupervi-
sors as discussed above, it is important to focus more closely on their turnover intention in
comparison to nonsupervisory personnel. Sufcient sample size exists to conduct split-
sample analysis on supervisory and nonsupervisory employees, and the results are reported
in tables 3 and 4.
The supervisory results in table 4 are stark, with only functional preferences and
performance rewards signicantly impacting turnover intention. Supervisors with high
JIM have only a 5% [.02, .11] chance of reporting intent to turnover compared with
49% [.31, .69] given the weakest functional preferences for their jobs. No signicant
solidary preference effects are observed.
Timely rewarding of high performance has a negative effect as anticipated (H1),
though it is weak in magnitude and signicance level (.10). The strongest belief in timely
rewards is associated with a 14% [.09, .19] chance of turnover intention, whereas the
weakest belief is associated with a 27% [.15, .42] likelihood. Of greater interest is the
signicant negative coefcient on the indicator variable for IRS supervisors. Those super-
visors, who face strong pay-for-performance incentives through paybanding are 14% [.11,
.18] likely to announce turnover intention, whereas OCC supervisors, who do not face
paybanding, are fully 25% [.19, .32] likely to do so.
Table 4
Probit Regression Results for Determinants of Turnover Intention, IRS and OCC Supervisors, 2002
Friendly workplace 0.127 0.082
Poor performance addressed 0.039 0.064
Quality of pay 0.032 0.070

Reasonable workload 0.059 0.056
Accountability for results 0.083 0.099
Male 0.025 0.132
IRS employee 0.382** 0.139
N 647
x220 94.330**
AIC 0.920
Note: Signicance levels 10% and **1%.
The story is quite different for nonsupervisory employees as shown in table 5. No

signicant difference between IRS and OCC subordinates is observed. Perceptions of pay
quality, functional preferences, friendship solidarity, burnout, and performance-enhancing
incentives are the most signicant factors associated with decreasing turnover intention. As
full sample and supervisory results, production solidarity has no signicant impact on
turnover intention among nonsupervisors. Timely performance rewards have no signicant
impact by contrast to the full-sample result, and men are more likely to announce turnover
intention than women.
Being held accountable for results signicantly and positively affects nonsupervisors
turnover intention probability. The likelihood of turnover intention when IRS and OCC
nonsupervisory personnel feel the weight of such accountability is a full 30% [.25, .37], but
falls to just 9% [.04, .18] when these personnel feel that they are not accountable for results.
The evidence suggests that perceived high-powered incentives can dampen the effect of
accountability in the full sample, but not among nonsupervisors alone.
Table 5
Probit Regression Results for Determinants of Turnover Intention, IRS and OCC Nonsupervisory
Employees, 2002
Friendly workplace 0.169** 0.060
Poor performance is addressed 0.053 0.048
Quality of pay 0.168** 0.053

Reasonable workload 0.111** 0.043
Accountability for results 0.206** 0.072
Male 0.210* 0.095
IRS employee 0.019 0.098
N 988
x220 80.324**
AIC 1.036
Note: Signicance levels 10%, *5%, and **1%.
DISCUSSION
Functional preferences are a strong and consistently negative determinant of turnover
intention for both supervisors and nonsupervisors in the IRS, but perceptions of the in-
adequacy of pay have an impact only among nonsupervisors. The latter effect shows mixed
support for H3, but is consistent with some ndings regarding job categories which are less
nancially and/or psychologically rewarding (see the review in Kellough and Osuna 1995,
623). This may characterize auditor and clerk positions that largely comprise the non-
supervisory levels at the IRS and the corresponding positions at the OCC.
It is the attitudes of these nonsupervisory employees regarding the pay-for-
performance variables that prove very intriguing. Though many of the variables examined
show no signicant relationship to turnover intention, a contradictory resultaccountability
for results as a negative and performance incentives as a positive determinant of turn-
over intention in the full and nonsupervisory samplesbrings into sharp relief a conun-
drum in the design of performance-based pay systems. Rational bureaucrats respond to
incentives, and the results for supervisors are somewhat consistent with this account given
the signicance of the timely rewards variable. Perceptions of the existence of such
rewards impact supervisors in the IRS and OCC differently. When paybanded IRS super-
visors perceive timely performance rewards most strongly, their turnover intention drops to
11% [.7, .16] from 24% [.13, .39] when they minimally perceive such rewards. By contrast,
the same distinction decreases turnover intention among OCC supervisors to 20% [.13, .39]
from a full 37% [.23, .54].13
These between-agency differences are not suggestive of the success of performance
incentives in compelling supervisors to stay in their jobs, but the lower turnover intention
in the IRS seems to support the claim that paybanding is not driving supervisors out of the

IRS at a faster rate than counterparts in the OCC. Thompson and Rainey (2003, 36) noted
that the IRS supervisors they interviewed reacted with fairly universal feeling to a pre-
reform situation where high-performing managers received no better pay increases than
those barely breathing. If the incentives are operating properly, functional preferences
are the most important factor in retaining supervisors as the logic of Brehm and Gates
(1997) anticipates. Also striking is the insignicance of pay given all the attention to
public-private discrepancies (i.e., National Commission on the Public Service 1989).
It is also interesting to note that incentives and accountability are associated with
higher levels of JIM but not with expressing a desire to leave ones job. Turnover intention
is negatively associated with functional preferences as one would anticipate.14 Moreover,
accountability is clearly seen as a good thing for a public agency, but among nonsupervi-
sors (and in the full sample), it is associated with higher turnover intention. This effect is
mitigated by incentives that are perceived to be connected to performance as evidenced
in the full-sample results. This is consistent with ndings in the organizational behavior
literature suggesting that rewards must be correlated with performance for employees to
respond to them (Porter and Lawler 1968).
Why might nonsupervisors be reacting this way? One possible explanation is their
perception of the legitimacy of the performance objectives they face. After the Senate
hearings and RRA, auditors, for example, are expected to have a customer service orien-
tation toward their clients. Indeed, Section 1203 of the RRA sets forth what have become
known as the 10 deadly sins (including the intentional failure to secure appropriate
signatures before seizing property and failing to timely le a tax return) that can result
in the employees dismissal. The customers of the IRS auditor may be seen by those
employees as tax cheats, deserving a less friendly service orientation.
But subordinates do not face the same performance incentives as IRS supervisors,
who are impacted directly by the paybanding system, and show no signicant effects
from the pay-for-performance variables. Moreover, this effect is also not isolated in one
of the two departments. IRS subordinates who strongly perceive results accountability
have a 31% [.24, .38] likelihood of announcing the intent to leave their jobs, whereas
their counterparts in the OCC are associated with a statistically identical 30% [.24, .37]
chance of the same. These results suggest that understanding the underlying concept of
13 Split-sample analysis suggests that timely rewards are very inuential in the OCC (b 5 .302, p 5 .037).
14 Least squares regression with Huber-White-Sandwich robust standard errors reveals the following relationship:
JIM 5 2:876 :494accountability :363incentives :552turnover intention:
All variables are signicant at p . .01 with R2 5 .38. The relationship for both supervisors and nonsupervisors
and for OCC and IRS employees is nearly identical to the full-sample result presented above.
results-oriented accountability in a nuanced way is important and should be the subject

of continued study.
Solidary preferences (H2) do indeed have an impact, which operates through friend-
ship, rather than production, solidarity. Brehm and Gates (1997, 101) found strong positive
effects of solidary preferences on subordinates work levels, and my analysis suggests that
it operates among subordinates as well. Yet, it is interesting that the split-sample analysis
reveals that nonsupervisors are driving the solidary effect. Indeed, no statistically signif-
icant results for either friendship or production solidarity are evident in the supervisory
results.
The effects of functional and solidary preferences on subordinates and in the full

sample are yet more interesting when contrasted with the mixed support found for the
impact of burnout (H4). Reasonable workload does reduce turnover intention among
nonsupervisory personnel, but this result is weakly counterbalanced by a positive effect
of turnover intention by subordinates who feel that their supervisors are accommodating
their work-life balance. Men who believe strongly in the latter proposition are associated
with a higher probability of turnover, 30% [.25, .35], than women, 23% [.18, .28],
suggesting that family considerations may be affecting women differently than men on
this issue (see Ezra and Deckman 1996). Indeed, split-sample analysis suggests that this
effect is driven by women (b 5 .217, p 5 .020). Thus, the effect may be explained by
a desire more signicant among women to leave their jobs for family reasons despite-
supervisory respect of work-life balance. Future research should consider this question
directly.
Management quality (H5) has a counterintuitive effect on turnover intention. I nd
that managerial review of organizational goals increases turnover, and this effect is driven
by subordinates in both agencies studied. It may be that a reevaluation of goals implies
organizational change and that such change relates to the politics that Ferris, Russ, and
Fandt (1989) found to be tied to burnout. This nding suggests an interesting question for
future research regarding the inuence of goal change on exit and exit intention. The
ambiguity of goals in the public sector may well have a differential impact on turnover
than in the private sector (see Chun and Rainey 2005).
CONCLUSION
This research was designed with two goals in mind. First, it connects the concept of
functional preferences of Brehm and Gates (1997) with theoretical concepts in organiza-
tion behavior, suggesting a novel measurement strategy for this important determinant in
understanding bureaucratic behavior. This concept is used presently to examine turnover
intention, though it can be extended to many other areas of interest to students of bureau-
cratic behavior. Second, it examines two subunits of the U.S. Treasury that differ dramat-
ically in performance incentives for supervisors. In choosing these departments for
analysis, the design permits an examination of performance pay in a paybanding scenario
with a control group.
I nd evidence that functional and solidary preferences decrease the likelihood
that bureaucrats will leave their jobs. Higher functional preferences decrease turnover
intention for both supervisors and subordinates, whereas friendship solidarity increases
the likelihood that nonsupervisors anticipate retaining their positions, but neither
friendship nor production solidarity impact the turnover intention of supervisors.
The imposition of performance incentives can make a difference for the retention of
supervisors, who appear dissuaded from leaving their jobs by the availability of timely
performance-based rewards. Subordinates turnover intention is not affected by the
rewards they collect for meeting their organizations goals, though it is positively
affected when these employees feel that they are held accountable for results. Subordi-
nates are also more driven to retain their jobs when they perceive that their pay is
appropriate, but supervisors are not.
The results generally emphasize the strength of the theoretical approach to bureau-
cratic behavior offered by Brehm and Gates (1997) and have important implications for
public sector personnel practices. IRS paybanding incentives for supervisors govern a sce-

nario where functional preferences are the primary determinants of the intention of its
supervisors to remain in their positions, thereby retaining the critical link required in the
political control of bureaucracy of inducing bureaucratic compliance through supervision.
That effect is striking, since JIM, including public service motivation, are highly desirable
traits in committed employees.
APPENDIX: MEASUREMENT MODEL SPECIFICATION

Given that responses to the component items take four ordered values after the
recoding described in the text, I employ an ordinal response model for estimating the
latent functional preference (JIM) trait (see, e.g., Quinn 2004). I use the generalized linear
and latent model framework of Rabe-Hesketh, Skrondal, and Pickles (2004a) to specify an
estimable version of the model. A single response vector is employed with an indicator
variable for each item. This permits a specication of the response model with item-
specic covariates. The item indicator variables are created as follows:

1; if p 5 i;
xpij 5
0; otherwise:
Given this specication, one may write the linear predictor, the systematic component
of the right-hand side of equation (1) in the text, for response ij as
hij 5 x9ij a uj x9ij b;
where uj is the random variable that measures JIM and the vector x9ij contains the item-
specic dummy variables.15 By analogy to factor analysis, the purpose of the indicator
variables is to identify the correct factor loading for each item in the scale.
15 The canonical link between the conditional expectation of the vector of responses (dropping item and
individual subscripts) to all m items and a linear predictor h is
h 5 a bu 5 fm 5 fEyju; a; b:
Given the conditional density of response ij, f(yij|uj, ai, bi) and the (normal) prior distribution of the
latentvariables huj ; we can write the likelihood function as follows:
( )
YZ Y
f yij juj ; ai ; bi huj duj :
j i
The conditional distribution of observed ordinal response categories otij can be written
by including thresholds kt where t 2 {1, 2, 3, 4} and yij is the response of individual j to
question i as before:
8
>
> o1ij ; if y*ij k1 ;
>
< o ; if y* k , y* k ;
2ij ij 1 ij 2
yij 5 * *
>
> o3ij ; if y ij k 2 , y ij k3;
>
: o ; if k y*
4ij 3 ij :
The probability of the tth response category is written as follows:

Pryij 5 otij 5 Prkt1 , y*ij kt
5 Fkt ai bi =uj =si Fkt1 ai bi uj =si :
The scale parameter si corresponds to the standard deviation of e, the stochastic
component in equation (1). This model can be written cumulatively to better illustrate
the effect of the scale parameter.
gPryij otij 5 kt ai bi uj =si 5 kt ai =si bi uj =si :
This scaled ordered probit link function thus permits different linear transforma-
tions of the thresholds for each question through the free estimation of item-level scale
parameters (Skrondal and Rabe-Hesketh 2004, 30). The computer routine used in this
analysis estimates the natural logarithm of these scale parameters, ln si (Rabe-Hesketh,
Skrondal, and Pickles 2004b, 96). These estimates are presented with estimates of the other
parameters in table 1.
Missing values on any of the variables in the estimation are permitted in the estima-
tion algorithm. My assumption is that a missing value observed on item i is not a function
of the indicator variable for that item, known as missing at random.16 The 2002 survey
included 1,842 respondents employed by the IRS and OCC who answered at least one of
the six questions included in the JIM scale (1,058 from the IRS and 784 from the OCC).
Since the unit of analysis is the individual response, the number of observations for the
measurement model is 11,030 (1,842 respondents to six questions with 22 missing re-
sponses), whereas the probit regressions used to examine turnover intention have 1,842
observations, one for each individual respondent.
The measurement model requires the standard assumptions of item response theory.
As equation (1) makes clear, the response of individual j to question i is dependent on js
latent trait, uj. Estimation of this latent trait yields the scores employed in my subsequent
analysis (Johnson and Albert 1999, 188). In order to estimate the effect of individual-level
latent traits on the combined responses of all surveyed individuals, I must also assume local
independence of js responses. This means that js responses to each of the m items are
independent given uj, ai, and bi. Responses that j makes to items i and k 6 i may be
correlated, but any correlation is wholly explained by uj (Johnson and Albert 1999, 189).
In other words, the m responses provide some information about individual j, but once uj
is known, the relationship between the responses is fully partialled out (Nunnally and
Bernstein 1994, 398).
16 This assumption is less stringent than the missing-completely-at-random assumption that is made when
missing data are listwise deleted (Little and Rubin 1987).
The Generalized Linear Latent and Mixed Models (GLLAMM) routine for STATA
9.1 is used to perform the estimation (Rabe-Hesketh, Skrondal, and Pickles 2004b). This
routine numerically integrates the latent quantity from the log-likelihood by adaptive quad-
rature and maximizes the resulting and much simpler marginal likelihood function with the
Newton-Raphson algorithm (Rabe-Hesketh, Skrondal, and Pickles 2004a, 174). The goal
of adaptive quadrature is to evaluate the likelihood function at the fewest possible points
while still retaining accuracy. The reported statistical results employ eight-point adaptive
quadrature, though a likelihood ratio test against a 30-point routine does not reveal change
in the log-likelihood by any signicant amount. Additionally, a one-parameter ordinal logit
IRT model (no discrimination parameter) was compared with the two-parameter model

using a likelihood ratio test, and the former was shown to provide an inferior t
x25 df 5 175:30:
The latent measure of intrinsic motivation for individual j is an empirical Bayes,
or expected a posteriori, estimate based on the parameter estimates reported in table 1.17
To identify the model theoretically (Skrondal and Rabe-Hesketh 2004, sec. 5.2), I anchor
the discrimination parameter for the rst item (b1 or the coefcient on Q11) at 1 and
its difculty parameter (a1 or the intercept) at 0 with the variance of the former freely
estimated. The scale parameter for the rst item (s1) is also constrained to 1 lns1 5 0:
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17 Formally, the latent measure can be written as

R Q
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Determinants of Turnover Intentions On Federal Employees

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Determinants of Bureaucratic Turnover

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PAY-FOR-PERFORMANCE REFORMS AND THE U.S. TREASURY

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H1 Perceptions of Performance-Enhancing Rewards Decrease the Likelihood of

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Accountability for results is important, as it measures bureaucrats perceived respon-

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(1995) used a previous survey to understand nonmonetary motivations of federal employees

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