Commentary: Three‐Part Harmony

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12167
• Date: 01 January 2014
• Published date: 01 January 2014

112 Public Administration Review • January | February 2014

David R. Schachter is assistant dean

for student affairs in the Robert F. Wagner

Graduate School of Public Service at New

York University. He oversees student

and program services, career services, and

the Capstone program. He teaches

Wagner’s “Composing Your Career”

workshop, and he contributed to The

Idealist Guide to Nonprof‌i t Careers

and The Idealist Guide to Nonprof‌i t

Careers for Sector Switchers. He

received his master’s degree in public

administration from NYU Wagner and

a bachelor of f‌i ne arts from NYU’s Tisch

School of the Arts.

E-mail: david.schachter@nyu.edu

Sherry Glied is dean of New York

University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate

School of Public Service. She served as

assistant secretary for planning and

evaluation in the Department of Health

and Human Services from 2010 to 2012.

Previously, she was professor of health

policy and management in the Mailman

School of Public Health at Columbia

University. She holds a PhD in economics

from Harvard University.

E-mail: sherry.glied@nyu.edu

Commentary

Sherry Glied

David R. Schachter

New York University

Anne Mette Kjeldsen’s analysis of public service

motivation, which divides Danish public

service employee motivation between service

production (or service delivery) and service regula-

tion (or policy), provides a welcome expansion of the

existing literature on the motivations of public service

staf‌f and how experience reshapes their predilections

over time. Our experience supports her f‌i ndings and

suggests that her framework misses a critical third

dimension of public service career choice in the

United States.

Kjeldsen f‌i nds that students who begin in service

production are often drawn to service regulation over

time. In our experience, we have found that a substan-

tial share of current and future public service employ-

ees are motivated to pursue a public service career by a

direct, often personal, encounter with a societal need

in a particular f‌i eld. Students initially associate this

experience with a desire to provide services themselves

and begin their work lives with an experience in

direct service delivery in that f‌i eld—for example, as a

classroom teacher, Peace Corps volunteer, or homeless

shelter worker. Consistent with Kjeldsen’s f‌i ndings,

this experience of service delivery often leads to a shift

in the student’s focus toward an interest in service

regulation.

In a sense, these career trajectories ref‌l ect a process of

maturation, of expanding lenses. Students begin with

their own personal experience, pursue initial opportu-

nities that help other identif‌i able individuals, and then

move to the more abstract exercise of developing the

management systems and policies that frame service

 ree-Part Harmony