2024 Spring Seminar Series Seminar: Robert Christensen Brigham Young University

Measuring Sector’s Importance to Citizens: A Research Agenda

Christensen’s research explores the relevance of sector (government, nonprofit, business) in shaping citizen perceptions, engagement, trust and expectations. He argues that sector acts as a proxy for dominant value sets.  These value sets, however, have been poorly measured.  Extending the publicness and public values literatures, Christensen outlines one abstract and three concrete ways that sector values might be measured. For example, in one study comparing ethical expectations of actors from three sectors, Christensen finds that citizens tend to punish misbehaviors more severely in the public sector relative to the same misbehaviors in business and nonprofit settings.