Switching Employment from Private to Public Sector in Cambodia : Public Servants’ Motives for Sector Switching and Challenges

This master thesis investigates the public servants’ motives for switching their employment from the private to the public sector and for having a tendency to work in the public organization. It also focuses on factors they describe as job satisfaction and the challenges they have encountered after transitioning to the public-sector employment. The framework of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs and Herzberg’s two factor theories provide an explanation for the reasons why public employees switched sectors and their perception on factors they perceived as motivation and challenges after switching into a new workplace in a new sector. A qualitative study was conducted, using semi-structured interviews to collect data from 8 respondents who are currently working for the government. All of them used to work in the private sector and later moved into the public sector. The study reveals a number of distinctive motives for them to make a sector switch. These include secure employment and pension, less workload and work-related stress, family inspiration, pride in the public sector job, career advancement, and making positive impacts to the community. The findings also identify a number of challenges faced by these sector switchers such as low wage and moonlighting, complicated hierarchy and bureaucratic structures, ineffective leadership and other management issues within the public office. The knowledge and information on these challenges have the implications for certain stakeholders, including recent graduates, employees, politicians, leaders at public institutions, and especially policy makers. Policy makers and/or politicians should consider creating employment policies that entice talented individuals to work for the government and enhance the working conditions for new civil servants. The study also has the potential to pave the way for the prospective recent graduates and employees, giving them sufficient information on which to base their choice of employment, either in private sector or for the government