Does organizational ownership matter? Objectives of employees in public, nonprofit and for-profit nursing homes

• Published in: Applied economics Vol. 47; no. 24; pp. 2500 - 2513
• Main Authors: Van Puyvelde, Stijn, Caers, Ralf, Du Bois, Cind, Jegers, Marc
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Routledge 21-05-2015; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Aged; Applied economics; Business ownership; discrete choice experiment; Employee attitude; Employees; Medical personnel; mixed logit; nonprofit; Nursing; Nursing homes; Objectives; Ownership; Quantitative analysis; Studies
• ISSN: 0003-6846; 1466-4283
• DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2015.1008767

Does organizational ownership matter for employees? We conducted a discrete choice experiment to reveal employees' objectives in for-profit, nonprofit and governmental nursing homes. The results indicate that differences in objectives among nursing home staff are at least partially related to differences in ownership type. More specifically, we find that employees of public nursing homes are less extrinsically motivated than their for-profit and nonprofit counterparts. However, the results also show that employees of for-profit, nonprofit and governmental nursing homes are trading off output quality and output quantity differently, in line with the view that public providers of elderly care are pursuing a supplier-of-last-resort objective function.