U1D1-24-Compare and Contrast the differences in employee management in both public and private organizations (non-profit). see details

CHAPTER 1

The World of Public Personnel Management

 

 

Throughout the world, public personnel management (also known as human resource management or HRM) is widely recognized as essential for effective government. Increasingly, as we come to view the shared role of governments, private corporations, and international development organizations (governance) as the key to sustainable development, we recognize that throughout the world, human resources are potentially available yet, in practice, wasted. Interrelated global conditions—economic, political, social, and environmental—define the new millennium. Some are positive: Economic development and increased government capacity in countries like Brazil, Russia, India, and China raise hopes of a global trend toward stable, transparent, and representative governance. Others are negative: Global climate change, endemic poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, endemic violence in “hot spots” like Chechnya and Pakistan, and the continued fragility of Middle Eastern states threaten complex and fragile governance networks. Whether positive or negative, these conditions substantially affect administrative culture, and thus how HRM systems develop in practice.

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

1. Define the functions needed to manage human resources.

2. Explain why public jobs are scarce resources.

3. Describe the four traditional values that underlie the conflict over public jobs.

4. Discuss some consequences of these emergent HRM practices on state civil service reform efforts and traditional values.

5. Describe the history of public personnel management in the United States as one of conflict and compromise among competing personnel systems and values.

6. Explore the relationship between economic development and governance capacity, and propose an agenda for strengthening merit systems in transitional or fragile states.

TABLE 1-1	Human Resource Management Functions
Function	Purpose
Planning	Budget preparation, workforce planning; performance management, job analysis, and pay and benefits
Acquisition	Recruitment and selection of employees
Development	Training, evaluating, and leading employees to increase their willingness and ability to perform well
Sanction	Maintaining expectations and obligations that employees and the employer have toward one another through discipline, health and safety, and employee rights

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS

First, HRM comprises the four fundamental functions needed to manage human resources in public, private, and nonprofit organizations. These functions, designated by the acronym PADS, are planning, acquisition, development, and sanction. Table 1-1 presents them along with the personnel activities that comprise them.

PUBLIC JOBS AS SCARCE RESOURCES

Second, public jobs are scarce resources. Public jobs include private- or nonprofit-sector jobs funded through government contracts. Tax revenues limit them. Their allocation is enormously significant for public policy making. Because jobs are how we measure economic and social status and because public jobs are scarce and important, individuals and groups compete for them.

THE FOUR TRADITIONAL VALUES

Third, public personnel management is the continuous interaction among fundamental values that often conflict because they reflect key differences over who gets public jobs and how, and over job security. While most prominent in hiring and separation decisions, these value considerations affect any personnel action that allocates scarce resources or opportunities. Traditionally, conflict in the United States has centered around four values:

•Political responsiveness and representation—an appointment process that considers personal loyalty and political support as indicators of merit.

•Efficiency—making staffing decisions based on applicants' and employees' abilities and performance.

•Employee rights—protecting employees from political interference or arbitrary treatment that may threaten their job security or interfere with their job performance.

•Social equity—adequately representing all groups in the workforce and managing this diverse workforce to maintain productivity and a positive organizational culture.

THE FOUR TRADITIONAL PUBLIC HRM SYSTEMS: PATRONAGE, CIVIL SERVICE, COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Fourth, public HRM comprises systems. These are the laws, rules, organizations, and procedures used to fulfill the four personnel functions in ways that express abstract values. There are four traditional systems: patronage, merit (civil service), collective bargaining, and affirmative action. Civil service is the predominant traditional system and the only complete system because it includes all four functions and can incorporate all four competing values. It dominates HRM culture in countries that have invested heavily in economic development.

Political Patronage

Public jobs in the United States were initially shared among elite leaders—the small group of upper-class property owners who had led the American Revolution, which won independence from England, and established a national government in 1789. The passing of this generation of “founding fathers” led to the emergence of a political system based around political parties. By the 1830s, this in turn created a patronage system that rewarded party members and campaign workers with jobs once their candidate was elected. This “spoils system” expanded as the size and functions of government grew after the Civil War (1861–1865). Political patronage means legislative or executive approval of individual hiring decisions, particularly for policy-making positions, based on the applicant's personal loyalty to the appointing official, or political support among stakeholders the appointing official represents. The elected officials who nominate political appointees may also fire them at any time. While the patronage system does not necessarily result in the selection of highly qualified employees or provision of efficient government services, it does enable elected officials to achieve political objectives by placing loyal supporters in key positions in administrative agencies. Moreover, it increases political responsiveness because elected officials get reelected by providing stakeholders with access to administrative agencies during the policy-making process. As an example of how patronage systems work in practice, the General Accountability Office (GAO) publishes the Plum Book—a listing of U.S. government policy and supporting positions—immediately following each presidential election.1 The White House also has an online application process for political appointments.2

Civil Service (Merit) Systems

In the United States, the period between 1883 and 1937 is important in the development of public personnel administration based on merit principles. With increased pressures for rational and transparent government and increased demands for more effective delivery of public services to meet the needs of an industrializing economy came increased dissatisfaction with patronage-based personnel systems. First, in progressive state governments like New York and then in the federal government, voters and reform organizations such as the National Civic League demanded merit-based HRM. The assassination of newly inaugurated President Garfield by an unsuccessful office-seeker in 1881 was a defining event that led Congress to approve the Pendleton Act (1883), marking a fundamental shift from patronage to merit systems.3 The principles in Table 1-2 reflect the civil service ideal—the belief that a competent, committed workforce of career civil servants is essential to the professional conduct of the public's business.5

TABLE 1-2

Merit System Principles 4

1. Recruitment should be from qualified individuals from appropriate sources in an endeavor to achieve a workforce from all segments of society, and selection and advancement should be determined solely based on relative ability, knowledge and skills, after fair and open competition that assures that all receive equal opportunity.

2. All employees and applicants for employment should receive fair and equitable treatment in all aspects of personnel management without regard to political affiliation, race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, or handicapping condition, and with proper regard for their privacy and constitutional rights.

3. Equal pay should be provided for work of equal value with appropriate consideration of both national and local rates and by employers in the private sector, and appropriate incentives and recognition should be provided for excellence in performance.

4. All employees should maintain high standards of integrity, conduct, and concern for the public interest.

5. The workforce should be used efficiently and effectively.

6. Employees should be retained based on the adequacy of their performance; inadequate performance should be corrected; and employees who cannot or will not improve their performance to meet required standards should be separated.

7. Employees should be provided effective education and training in cases in which such education and training would result in better organizational and individual performance.

8. Employees should be:

a. protected against arbitrary action, personal favoritism, or coercion for partisan political purposes.

b. prohibited from using their official authority or influence for interfering with or affecting the result of an election or a nomination for election.

9. Employees should be protected against reprisal for the lawful disclosure of information which the employees reasonably believe as evidences:

a. a violation of any law, rule or regulation.

b. mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.

While the Pendleton Act affirmed that merit principles were the basis for making public personnel decisions, the tools to achieve these in reality did not emerge until the application of scientific management principles to administration during the 1920s. The cornerstone of public personnel management was position classification—grouping jobs by occupational type and skill level and paying them equitably based on the competencies needed to perform the job. It translates labor costs (for pay and benefits) into impersonal grades that can be added, subtracted, averaged, and moved about to create organizational charts. The legislature or the chief executive can limit personnel expenses to the total pay and benefits for all positions. They can set personnel ceilings to limit or preclude hiring. They may assign units an average allowable position grade, thus ensuring that they will not become top heavy. It clarifies career ladders and aids in the recruitment, selection, training, and assessment processes by specifying duties and qualifications for each position. More than any other personnel function, it epitomizes the connection between efficiency and the elimination of politics from administration, and suggests that public personnel management can be conducted in a routine and politically neutral fashion. At the same time, it can minimize political or administrative abuse and protect individual rights. Each employee's job duties are specified in his or her job description. Pay rates are tied to positions so individual favorites cannot be paid more than others can. Thus, hiring people at a high salary and asking them to assume few if any responsibilities—something that occurs frequently in political patronage systems—is minimized.

Intense conflict sometimes marks the relationship between political patronage and civil service systems because both represent powerful and legitimate values. For example, the tremendous economic, military, and social problems confronting the United States during the New Deal and World War II (1933–1945) brought about the emergence of administrative effectiveness, which combines administrative efficiency with political responsiveness. This combination required that civil service personnel cover most positions, but that political appointees fill sensitive or policy-making positions. It resulted in programs consistent with elected officials' philosophy and vision of government, and with administrators' ability to make operational plans and manage resources efficiently. Inevitably, this hybrid of politics and efficiency created strains in the merit-based model of public personnel management. The merit model viewed public HRM as a neutral administrative function; the effectiveness model viewed it as a management-oriented function under the direction of the executive branch.

Given the obvious need for politically responsive agency management, one might wonder why merit system advocates are so paranoid about protection from political influence.6 The reason is that despite elected officials' assertions in support of merit system values, frequent incidents indicate that they consider political loyalty the most important criterion for selection regardless of the consequences. Thus, merit system proponents have learned to be extremely vigilant in detecting and preventing harassment or discharge of political appointees for reasons that seem to be based more on politics than on performance. Arecent controversy was Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez' forced resignation (2007) over the Justice Department's alleged discharge of several U.S. Attorneys General for investigative or prosecutorial policies that ran counter to the White House's partisan political interests.7

We can view much of the history of public personnel management as efforts to reconcile civil service and patronage systems at an operational level. The Pendleton Act (1883) created the civil service system at the federal level, leading eventually to the development and implementation of civil service systems for a majority of professional and technical positions. The Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of 1978, passed almost a century later, was designed to maintain bureaucratic responsiveness but still protect the career civil service from political interference. It created a Senior Executive Service (SES) of high-level administrators who voluntarily elected to leave their civil service positions in return for multi-year performance contracts, in exchange for the possibility of higher salaries and greater career challenge and flexibility. Recognizing the fundamental conflict between protecting employee rights and maintaining management oversight over personnel policies within federal agencies, the CSRA split the old U.S. Civil Service Commission into two agencies, the Merit Systems Protection Board (USMSPB), and the Office of Personnel Management (USOPM). The MSPB is responsible for hearing appeals from employees alleging that their rights under civil service system laws and rules have been violated;8 the OPM is responsible for developing, implementing, and evaluating personnel policies within federal agencies. However, in recent years, a number of federal agencies have sought and received OPM exemptions from Title V of the U.S. Code (which captures the federal government's personnel regulations) to create civil service systems designed with their own agency's needs in mind.

Collective Bargaining and Affirmative Action Systems

Under collective bargaining, contracts negotiated between management and unions set the terms and conditions of employment. This is in contrast to the patronage system, where they are set and operationally influenced by elected officials, or the civil service system, where they are set by law and regulations issued by management and administered by management or an outside authority (such as a civil service board). Public sector collective bargaining has many of the same procedures as its private sector counterpart, such as contract negotiations and grievance procedures. However, fundamental differences in law and power outweigh these similarities. Public sector unions never have the right to negotiate binding contracts with respect to wages, benefits, or other economic issues. This is because only legislative bodies (such as the city council, school board, or state legislature) have the authority to appropriate money to fund contracts. Therefore, both labor and management realize that ratification of negotiated contracts is more critical than negotiation of them and set their political strategies accordingly. Civil service systems include all public employees covered by collective bargaining agreements.

During the same period, affirmative action systems arose as a direct result of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the women's rights movement of the 1970s. They represented the value of social equity through recruitment and selection practices to correct the underrepresentation of veterans, minorities, and women in the workplace. They reflected the fundamental beliefs that a representative bureaucracy was essential for government to function as a democracy; and that other personnel systems had not been effective at ensuring this.9 In fact, all these systems had perpetuated—often inadvertently and always for different reasons—the dominance of white males in public employment. Because most elected officials are white males, appointment of white males to patronage jobs has been the rule. Because white males traditionally have had greater access to higher education and job experience, merit systems have tended to perpetuate the exclusion of women and minorities. The seniority systems favored by collective bargaining tend to perpetuate these biases.

favored by collective bargaining tend to perpetuate these biases.

TWO EMERGENT SYSTEMS: PRIVATIZATION AND PARTNERSHIPS

Privatization emerged as an identifiable public HRM system at the end of the 1970s when Jimmy Carter campaigned against public agencies and employees as a Washington “outsider.” Following his election, he proposed the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 on grounds that included poor performance in the public service and difficulty in controlling and directing bureaucrats. Beginning in 1981, the Reagan administration, though it held fundamentally different values and policy objectives, continued to cast government as part of the problem. Consequently, increasing reliance on market-based forces rather than on program implementation by government agencies and employees as the most efficacious tools of public policy marked this paradigm shift. The emphasis on economic perspectives and administrative efficiency reflected the intense pressures on the public sector to “do more with less.” This caused governments to become more accountable through such techniques as program budgeting, management by objectives, program evaluation, and management information systems. It also resulted in efforts to lower expenditures through tax and expenditure ceilings, deficit reduction, deferred expenditures, accelerated tax collection, service fees and user charges, and a range of legislative and judicial efforts to shift program responsibilities and costs away from each affected government.

Because most public expenditures are for employee salaries and benefits, efforts to increase accountability and cut costs focused on HRM functions. The shift continued the trend set in previous eras such as the 1930s and the 1960s, emphasizing program outputs and rationally tying program inputs to outputs (e.g., program budgeting, HR forecasting, job evaluation, management by objectives, objective performance appraisal, training needs assessment, cost-benefit analysis, and gain sharing/productivity bargaining). Moreover, the information systems revolution expanded access to information formerly used by management for coordination and control, resulting in organizational restructuring and the downsizing of mid-managerial positions.

The 1990s brought continued efforts to increase government responsiveness and effectiveness, or to “shrink the beast” and put more resources in the hands of individuals and businesses. These were exemplified by Vice President Gore's National Performance Review,10 aimed at creating a government that “works better and costs less” through fundamental changes in organizational structure and accountability, epitomized by the terms “reinventing government” or “New Public Management.”11 These trends decentralized most HR functions to operating agencies and thus reduced OPM's functions and authority; it also reduced federal civilian employment, particularly staff positions (personnel, budget, auditing, and procurement) and middle managers with no direct relationship to productivity increases.

The Republican Party gained control of Congress in 1994 and again in 2002 because of a shift toward three emergent nongovernmental values: personal accountability, limited and decentralized government, and community responsibility for social services. Proponents of personal accountability expect people to make individual choices consistent with their own goals and accept responsibility for the consequences of these choices, rather than passing responsibility for their actions on to society. Proponents of limited and decentralized government believe that people should fear government for its power to arbitrarily or capriciously deprive them of their rights. They also believe that public policy, service delivery, and revenue generation can be controlled more efficiently in a smaller unit of government. Some want to reduce the size and scope of government because they prefer individual freedom and prefer to spend less of their personal income on taxes.

A belief in community responsibility supplemented this preference for limited and decentralized government and personal accountability. The most significant consequence of this, at least as far as public HRM is concerned, was the delivery of local governments' social services through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) funded by taxes, user fees, and charitable contributions. Third-party social service provision became more complex with an ideologically driven emphasis that directed contracting strategies toward faith-based organizations (FBOs). With the passage of the “charitable choice” component of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996,12 charitable choice has expanded to include a range of federal programs, such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (1996); Welfare-to-Work Formula Grants (1997);13 Community Services Block Grants (1998);14 and drug abuse treatment programs (2000).15 The establishment of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and five similar offices in the Departments of Education, Justice, Health and Human Services, Labor, and Housing and Urban Development enabled these federal agencies to contract with faith-based organizations (FBOs) nationwide.16 According to a study conducted by the Rockefeller Institute of Government (2003), this also occurred at the state level.17 As of the date of that study, 32 states had contracted with FBOs to provide some social services, and eight states had enacted legislation requiring the inclusion of FBOs in contracting. State Departments of Labor also received directives from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) office of Faith-Based Initiatives requiring them to develop state DOL strategic plans aimed at increasing the number of FBO grantees by providing these organizations with training and technical assistance as they competed for service provision contracts.

This emerging partnerships system rests on the same values of personal accountability, limited and decentralized government, and community responsibility for social services that characterized privatization, with an added strategic emphasis on cooperative service delivery among governments, businesses, and NGOs. The partnership paradigm is under-girded by the belief that concrete results in public service delivery can only be achieved by the skilled deployment of human assets regardless of the framework within which it occurs. Its advocates also argue that the deployment of human assets is best accomplished outside of the traditional civil service model or third-party service delivery options. However, two concerns remain. First, reliance on NGOs to deliver public services assumes—often erroneously—that they have the organizational capacity to do so.18 In addition, using NGOs as contractors can lead to the marketization of the nonprofit sector, thereby weakening the civil society they constitute.19

THIRD-PARTY GOVERNMENT AND NONSTANDARD WORK ARRANGEMENTS

While public agencies continue to meet most of their employment needs through traditional public personnel systems like civil service, the rise of privatization and partnerships has had a significant impact on the way government agencies deliver public services. Two trends are apparent: (1) third-party government (using alternative organizations or mechanisms for providing public services) and (2) nonstandard work arrangements (NSWA) such as temporary and part-time employment.

Third-Party Government

Purchase-of-service agreements with other governmental agencies and NGOs have become commonplace.20 They enable counties and larger cities to sell services within a given geographic area, utilizing economies of scale. They offer smaller municipalities a way of reducing capital costs, personnel costs, the political issues associated with collective bargaining, and legal liability risks. Moreover, the use of outside consultants and businesses (hired under fee-for-service arrangements on an “as-needed” basis) increases available expertise and managerial flexibility by reducing the range of qualified technical and professional employees that the agency must otherwise hire to provide training.

Privatization may result in the abolition of the agency (sometimes as an intended ideological goal). Privatization offers all the advantages of service purchase agreements but holds down labor and construction costs on a larger scale. Privatization has become commonplace in areas such as solid waste disposal, where there is an easily identifiable “benchmark” (standard cost and service comparison with the private sector), and where public agency costs tend to be higher because of higher pay and benefits.21

Franchise agreements often allow private businesses to monopolize a previously public function within a geographic area, charge competitive rates for it, and then pay the appropriate government a fee for the privilege. Examples are cable TV and private jitneys as a public transit option. Municipalities often encourage the procedure because it reduces their own costs, provides some revenue in return, and results in a continuation of a desirable public service.

Subsidy arrangements enable private businesses to perform public services funded by either user fees from clients or cost reimbursement from public agencies. Examples are airport security operations (provided by private contractors and paid for by both passengers and airlines), some types of hospital care (e.g., emergency medical services provided by private hospitals and reimbursed by public health systems), and housing (subsidizing rent in private apartments occupied by low-income residents as an alternative to public housing projects).

Vouchers enable individual recipients of public goods or services to purchase them from competing providers on the open market. Under proposed educational voucher systems, for example, parents would receive a voucher that could be applied to the cost of education for their child at competing institutions (public or private), as an alternative to public school monopolies.

Volunteers provide contributed services otherwise performed by paid employees, if any. These include neighborhood crime watch programs operated in cooperation with local police departments, tutoring by volunteer teachers' aides in many public schools, and community residents who volunteer services as individuals, or through churches and other nonprofit service agencies. Frequently, such contributions are required to “leverage” a federal or state grant of appropriated funds. Although they would probably not consider themselves volunteers, inmates are often responsible for laundry, food service, and prison facilities maintenance.

Regulatory and tax incentives are typically used to encourage the private sector to perform functions that might otherwise be performed by public agencies with appropriated funds. These include zoning variances (for roads, parking, and waste disposal) granted to condominium associations. In return, the condominium association provides services normally performed by local government (security, waste disposal, and maintenance of common areas).

Nonstandard Work Arrangements

Increasingly, public employers reduce costs and enhance flexibility by supplementing full-time civil service hiring with temporary or part-time employees.22 A main though often unstated reason for the use of these contingent workers is that they are not included in the “head count” of agency employees, giving the appearance of reducing the agency's workforce.23 They usually receive lower salaries and benefits than their career counterparts and are certainly unprotected by due process entitlements or collective bargaining agreements.24 Conversely, where commitment and high skills are required on a temporary basis, employers may seek to save money or maintain flexibility by using contract or leased employees to positions exempt from civil service protection. While contracts may be routinely renewed with the approval of the employee and the employer, employees may also be discharged at will in the event of a personality conflict, a change in managerial objectives, or a budget shortfall. Managerial and technical employees hired into these types of contracts usually receive higher salaries and benefits than can be offered to even highly qualified civil service employees, and they allow management to trim personnel costs easily if necessary, without having to resort to the bureaucratic chaos precipitated by the exercise of civil service “bumping rights” during a layoff.

CONSEQUENCES OF PRIVATIZATION AND NSWA

Civil Service Reform in the States

Several state governments have attempted to combine the advantages of traditional civil service employment with those of third-party government and NSWA. We have seen two types of reforms: modernization, meaning incremental structural and technical reforms to improve government performance, and radical reform, meaning wholesale efforts to dismantle existing civil service systems and replace them with systems more like those found in the private sector.25 Hays and Sowa describe and classify each state's reform experience by comparing the degree of centralization, number of at-will employees, the range of grieveable issues, gubernatorial activism, and perceived decline in job security.26 Based on their assessment, most states, including Arizona,27 California,28 New York,29 South Carolina,30 and Wisconsin,31 have reformed incrementally. Several states have introduced reforms that are more radical:

•In 1996, Georgia mandated “at-will” status for all new state employees, decentralization of authority for personnel policy and administration, and a new performance management system built largely on performance-based pay.32

•In 2001, Florida initiated “Service First,” a comprehensive effort to change the civil service by reforming recruitment, classification and compensation, and performance appraisal. It moved supervisors from classified to unclassified status and substituted “at-will” employment for “just cause job termination” on the assumption that effective and efficient government required business practices.33

•In 2000, Texas mandated at-will employment for civil service employees, with some exceptions, as part of a general movement toward decentralization and deregulation.34

The choice of criteria used to evaluate reform outcomes in state civil service systems is controversial because both practical and ideological objectives drive reform pressures for a range of actors with different objectives and perspectives.35 It is probably necessary to assess reforms by considering the answers from a range of stakeholders (elected and appointed officials, personnel directors, supervisors, public employee unions, and affirmative action directors) along the operational criteria defined by the following questions:

•Have reforms made state agencies more responsive administratively to political leadership without significantly lowering their resistance to patronage pressures?

•Have reforms allowed managers greater flexibility and discretion without significantly eroding employee rights, affirmative action, and collective bargaining?

•Have reforms increased employee performance without significantly diminishing agencies' ability to attract and retain those motivated by public service values?36

Most published research differentiates incremental and radical civil service reform. It uniformly concludes that incremental reform is a normal and positive response to continued pressure to increase government performance. Furthermore, it generally concludes that radical civil service reforms have not significantly increased in agency responsiveness, managerial flexibility, and discretion or employee performance. Alternatively, based on both evidence and ideology, such research concludes that reforms have been done only at the cost of increased agency vulnerability to patronage pressures, eroding employee rights, affirmative action and collective bargaining, or diminishing agencies' ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees motivated by public service values.37

However, these are the conclusions of public administration scholars who uniformly support traditional civil service values and systems. Outside the university, there is broad ideological support for at-will employment because the public desires to keep government under the control of elected officials. Beyond occasional newspaper reports and anecdotal evidence, there is little statistical support for the hypothesis that at-will employment means a return to patronage politics. As public employment has changed to include alternative service delivery through private businesses and NGOs, it has become more efficient to maintain political responsiveness via contracts and privatization rather than individual patronage appointments. The sheer size and complexity of government agencies, combined with freedom of information and the Internet, makes coordinated efforts to politicize entire bureaucracies much less likely to succeed. Finally, as career employment and civil service protection become scarcer, public and private employment differences begin to blur so that at-will employment is no longer an issue. Younger workers may anticipate that their career paths will involve a number of different jobs with different organizations in different sectors.

Effects on Traditional Values and Systems

Increased reliance on third-party government and NSWA has implications not only for the delivery of government services, but also for the values that underlie traditional public HRM.

The new strategies diminish employee rights. It is likely that employees hired under NSWA will receive lower pay and benefits and will be unprotected by civil service regulations or collective bargaining agreements.38 It seems logical to assume that as the criteria for success become more arbitrary or capricious, civil service employees—particularly those in mid-management positions—will begin to behave more like the political appointees whose jobs depend on political or personal loyalty to elected officials.39

The new strategies diminish social equity.40 Recent research has shown that women and minorities experience lower rates of wage discrimination (another variation of equal pay for equal work) in the public sector when controlling for factors such as age and education. This is probably the result of equal pay for equal work, as well as promotional and advancement opportunities in the public sector. Managerial consultants are overwhelmingly white and male. Many part-time and temporary positions are exempt from laws prohibiting discrimination against persons with disabilities or family medical responsibilities.

These strategies have had a mixed impact on agency efficiency. On the plus side, the change in public agency culture toward identifying customers and providing market-based services increases productivity. In addition, the threat of privatization or layoffs has forced unions to agree to pay cuts, reduced employer-funded benefits, and changes in work rules.41 However, these emergent systems may actually increase some personnel costs, particularly those connected with employment of independent contractors, reemployed annuitants, and temporary employees.42 Downsizing may eventually lead to higher recruitment, increased orientation and training costs, and loss of organizational memory and “core expertise” necessary to manage service contracting or privatization initiatives effectively.43 Maintaining minimum staffing levels also results in increased payment of overtime and higher rates of accidents and injuries. As the civil service workforce shrinks, it is also aging. This means unforeseen increases in pension payouts, disability retirements, workers' compensation claims, and health-care costs. Outsourcing makes contract compliance, rather than traditional supervisory practices, the primary control mechanism over the quality of service. This creates a real possibility of fraud and abuse.44

Emerging then is an HRM framework that embraces both the management of control and collaboration, which is paradoxical, exposing the underlying tensions inherent in the values of monitoring (compliance) and empowerment (outcomes). Debates over the desire to maintain control mechanisms associated with traditional civil service systems (risk adversity) and the strategic attractiveness of responsiveness and managerial empowerment (stewardship) illustrate these tensions. Yet increasingly, research calls for understandings that move beyond either/or thinking.45 Ambiguity and turbulence increase demands for a paradoxical approach to human resource management—one that embraces the simultaneous need for control and collaboration.

Opposing and interwoven elements are evident throughout government as citizens and public officials struggle with the coexistence of authority and democracy, efficiency and creativity, and freedom and control.46 The new HR paradigm may be increasingly about the management of both control and collaboration and, more critically, about developing understandings and practices that accept, accommodate, and even encourage these tensions.47 For example, state government agencies are increasingly using a model of collaborative social service provision and approaches for addressing social problems. These often involve overlapping partnerships with various public sector organizations and a recognition that the complexity of social issues is in part due to their residence within an interorganizational framework and that these problems cannot be tackled by any organization acting alone.48 These new and often confusing organizational relationships suggest that HR managers will need to not only manage control and collaboration simultaneously but also become much more sophisticated in the competencies needed to work across organizational boundaries.49 In the 1980s, the common mantra was “government must become more like business” by becoming more productive and efficient. Today, it is equally common to affirm, “Business must become more like government” in terms of accountability, transparency, and public sector ethics.50

The impact of third-party government on political responsiveness is problematic. The emergent values and systems place much less importance on the role of national government because the first value (individual accountability) reduces the role of government in society. If we view public problems as the results of individuals' personal choices, then the responsibility for dealing with the consequences of these problems is individual rather than societal. Downsizing and decentralization reduce the comparative importance of government in society and refocus governmental activity from a national to a state and local level. Continual budget cuts and pressure to “do more with less” result in agencies that are budget driven rather than mission driven. Moreover, budget-driven agencies that address public problems with short-term solutions designed to meet short-term legislative objectives are not likely to be effective. Long-range planning, or indeed any planning beyond the current budget cycle, is likely to become less important. Agencies will not be able to do effective capital budgeting or to adequately maintain capital assets (human or infrastructure).

CONFLICT AND COMPROMISE AMONG ALTERNATE PERSONNEL SYSTEMS

Historically, U.S. public HRM systems developed in evolutionary stages that are analytically separate but in practice overlapping. In the era of privilege (1789–1828), the small group of upper-class property owners who had won independence and established the national government held most public jobs. As this generation passed, an era of patronage emerged (1829–1882) during which public jobs were awarded according to political loyalty or party affiliation. Next, the increased size and complexity of public activities led to an era of professionalism (1883–1932) that defined public HRM as a neutral administrative function to emphasize modernization through efficiency and democratization by allocating public jobs, at least at the federal level, on merit. The unprecedented demands of a global depression and World War II led to the emergence of a hybrid performance model (1933–1964) that combined the political leadership of patronage systems and the merit principles of civil service systems. Next, social upheavals (1965–1980) presaged the emergence of the people era, in which collective bargaining emerged to represent collective employee rights, and affirmative action emerged to represent social equity. General dissatisfaction with government led to privatization and other business-based HRM solutions in the 1980s, followed by partnerships with NGOs and other contractors as third-party tools for public service delivery.

Because resources are limited, jobs allocated through one system cannot be allocated through others. Thus, advocates of each system strive to minimize the influence of others, often using defining events to increase pressure for change. For example, the assassination of President Garfield in 1881 directly related to the Pendleton Act in 1883. As another more contemporary example, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, dramatically increased the importance of safety (rather than cost or convenience) as the public's prime objective. This led to the amalgamation of many federal agencies into the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It also led to the creation of many public jobs (in the Department of Defense and the Transportation Safety Agency) and to demands that these jobs be filled outside the traditional federal civil service system.51

However, carried to its extreme, each value creates distortions that limit the effectiveness of human resource management because other values are suppressed. The key here is that each value is fundamental to American political culture. The ascendancy of one at the expense of others distorts administrative processes. Responsiveness carried to extremes results in the hiring of employees solely based on patronage, without regard for other qualifications, or in the awarding of contracts based solely on political considerations (kickbacks and corruption). Efficiency, carried to extremes, results in over-rationalized personnel procedures—for example, going to decimal points on test scores to make selection or promotion decisions, or making the selection process rigid in the belief that systematic procedures will produce the “best” candidate. Individual rights carried to extremes result in overemphasis on seniority or on due process and rigid disciplinary procedures. Social equity carried to extremes results in personnel decisions being based solely on group membership, disregarding individual merit or the need for efficient and responsive government. Moreover, we might expect that antigovernment values carried to extremes would eventually result in the emergence of a society dominated by markets rather than communitarian values or the public policy-making process. The weaknesses of market models—primarily their inability to address distributive equity or indivisible public goods—act to limit reliance on service contracting, privatization, user fees, and other business mechanisms.

Under ideal circumstances, public personnel management would reflect a combination of values associated in complementary ways. In reality, attempts by each system or value to dominate lead inevitably to stabilizing reactions and value compromises. For example, it is often hard to distinguish between political appointments and those resulting from civil service or affirmative action systems because hiring authorities rarely would choose a manager or professional based solely on one value. Over time, personnel systems will reflect the dominant values in a particular jurisdiction. The more stable the values, the more permanent the personnel systems and practices will become and the more dominant the influence of that culture on the organization. Stable personnel systems reflect the political cultures they operate in. Table 1-3 below presents the six stages of evolution, the dominant values and systems at each stage, and the pressures leading to the next stage of evolution.

BUILDING GOVERNANCE CAPACITY 52

Governance capacity is the ability of public, private, and nongovernmental organizations to work together toward economic development in the context of political, social, and environmental sustainability. Because the rule of law is essential to maintaining these governance coalitions, and because government alone exercises authoritative power through the rule of law, government capacity (making good policy decisions and using scarce resources effectively) is the key to development. Government capacity—or the lack thereof—is perhaps the most obvious factor affecting perceptions of governance. In developed countries, governance usually means maintaining government's ability to coordinate policy, gather information, deliver services through multiple (often nongovernmental) partners, and replace hierarchical bureaucracies with more flexible mechanisms for managing indirect government. In developing countries, it probably means establishing government's ability to deliver vital public services (through core administrative functions like budgeting, human resource management, and program evaluation), while simultaneously focusing on more fundamental changes (e.g., citizen participation, decentralization, innovation, and entrepreneurial leadership) necessary for effective political systems.

Building Public HRM Capacity

Public HRM systems are of course not unique to the United States. Other developed Western countries have merit systems that vary based on history and other conditions.53 The process of building public HRM capacity in developing countries is relatively uniform because pressures for modernization and democratization tend to parallel though lag behind those in the Western world; administrative reforms are introduced by Western consultants or exposure to the West; and Western lenders often mandate administrative reforms as a condition of continued credit.54

54

TABLE 1-3

The Evolution of Public HRM Systems and Values in the United States

Stage of Evolution	Dominant Value(s)	Dominant System(s)	Pressures for Change
Privilege (1789–1828)	Responsiveness/Representation	“Government by founding fathers”	Political Parties + Patronage
Patronage (1829–1882)	Responsiveness/Representation	Patronage	Modernization + Democratization
Professionalism (1883–1932)	Efficiency + Individual Rights	Civil Service	Responsiveness + Effective Government
Performance (1933–1964)	Responsiveness/Representation + Efficiency + Individual Rights	Patronage + Civil Service	Individual Rights + Social Equity
People (1965–1979)	Responsiveness/Representation + Efficiency + Individual Rights + Social Equity	Patronage + Civil Service + Collective Bargaining + Affirmative Action	Dynamic equilibrium among four competing values and systems
Privatization (1980–now)	Responsiveness/Representation + Efficiency + Individual Accountability + Limited government + Community Responsibility	Patronage + Civil Service + Collective Bargaining + Affirmative Action + Alternative Mechanisms + Flexible Employment Relationships	Dynamic equilibrium among four progovernmental values and systems, and three antigovernmental values and systems
Partnerships (2002–now)	Responsiveness/Representation + Efficiency + Individual Accountability + Limited Government + Community Responsibility + Collaboration	Patronage + Civil Service + Collective Bargaining + Affirmative Action + Alternative Mechanisms + Flexible Employment Relationships	Dynamic equilibrium among four progovernmental values and systems, three antigovernmental values and systems

In the first stage, the elite leaders of successful independence movements establish new nations. The transition to a second stage (patronage) follows as these emergent nations strive to strengthen the conditions in civil society that underlie effective government (such as education, political participation, economic growth, and social justice) by refining their constitutions, developing political parties, and creating public agencies. This transition is often difficult.55

The third stage, if it occurs, is a transition from patronage to merit systems marked by passage of a civil service law, creation of a civil service agency, and development of personnel policies and procedures. It happens due to internal pressures for efficiency (modernization) and human rights (democratization). Often, international lenders and donor governments add external pressures that emphasize government capacity, trans-parency, and citizen participation.

If the transition to civil service occurs, developing countries then seek to balance conflicting values and personnel systems to achieve the contradictory objectives that characterize the fourth stage of public personnel management. They must establish an optimum level of public employment, maintain administrative efficiency and protect public employee rights, and achieve both uniformity and flexibility of personnel policies and procedures.

Table 1-4 shows the dominant values and systems at each stage of this evolutionary process, and the pressures for change that lead to evolution from one stage to the next.

The Impact of Contextual Variables on National Development

Adoption of innovations that improve government capacity is a complex process that is heavily influenced by contextual variables related to time orientation; sovereignty and capacity; empowerment and accountability; and adaptability, flexibility, and incrementalism.

•Time orientation. Successful innovation diffusion and adoption, even under favorable circumstances, usually takes years, and often decades. Thus, organizational commitment to policy objectives usually extends beyond the involvement of any one program director or elected official.

•Sovereignty and capacity. In many cases, innovation diffusion and adoption takes place in fragile states where either sovereignty or capacity may be problematic. Creating new national sovereignty is different from, and harder than, building government capacity.

•Empowerment and accountability. Successful organizational change relates to empowerment and accountability. Empowerment is the increased ability of the poor to make political, social, or economic choices, and to act on those choices. This ties with accountability because it relates to result-oriented and customer-focused applications of New Public Management to managing development programs. The key to both is to develop a multilateral development assistance plan and a multinational, multi-institutional framework for financing development over a long period of time all supported by a participative and client-centered development management process.

•Adaptability, flexibility, and incrementalism. The more a policy decision is imbued with values, the less applicable the rational method, where inputs cannot be quantified as accurately. While theoreticians look for an all-encompassing model, a practitioner might find other processes to be more efficacious.56 Although problems seem similar across nations, types of solutions that are effective in one context may not succeed in another political, economic, or social setting. The composition of the critical mass of stake-holders is specific to the context and may not be generalized for application elsewhere beyond a few observations. “Smart practice” development program administration is not so much a toolkit of ideal practices as an operational guideline that emphasizes reducing mechanisms and factors that inhibit adaptation to contingency.57

TABLE 1-4

Evolution of Public Personnel Systems and Values in Developing Countries

Stage of Evolution	Dominant Value(s)	Dominant System(s)	Pressures for Change
One	Responsiveness/Representation	“Government by elites”	Political Parties + Patronage
Two	Responsiveness/Representation	Patronage	Modernization + Democratization
Three	Efficiency + Individual Rights	Civil Service + Patronage	Responsiveness + Effective Government
Four	Responsiveness/Representation + Efficiency + Limited Government	Patronage + Civil Service + Collective Bargaining + Privatization	Dynamic equilibrium among pro- and antigovernmental values and systems

Wicked Problems”: Culture, Circumstance, and Power

FAVORABLE POLITICAL CULTURE In the United States, the public HRM system developed through successive (and successful) fights against the excesses of patronage, and against social pressures to be the “employer of last resort,” in a well-developed economy that provides ample jobs outside government. Although our conflicts with corruption, cronyism, and nepotism are not completely resolved, we do expect that government will provide services efficiently, using honest and qualified employees. Exceptions generate cynicism or indignation precisely because they are exceptions. If they were the norm, they would not be news. Nor would they generate reform pressures to make government more honest or efficient.

It took us over two centuries to develop an effective balance between patronage and civil service. It is not reasonable or appropriate to insist that developing countries make this transition easily or quickly. Patronage politics characterized public personnel management at all levels in the United States until at least 1900. It continues today in many governments. In some levels and sectors of government it may not be a major issue; but cynics would respond that patronage is less serious only because it has been replaced by corrupt contracts as a more effective means of exchanging campaign contributions for access to public officials.58

FAVORABLE HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES The development of U.S. public personnel management has occurred within a context of almost two centuries of democratic government under a single Constitution and within a civil society widely considered controlled by laws rather than by individuals. Though our policy-making process is costly, complex, and tortuous, it results in outcomes that are generally considered to be transparent, effective at maintaining government authority, and politically responsive to the will of the electorate. Our tax system functions well, in spite of (or because of) its voluntary nature. While our society is deeply affected by conflicts based on race, ethnicity, and class, it provides great opportunity for personal growth and economic advancement. Our political and administrative processes are generally open to public scrutiny thanks to laws facilitating access to records by the press and public.

POWER By every meaningful economic, political, and military measure, the United States is the most powerful country in the world. This power largely exempts us from influence by other nations or international agencies. Indeed, our power is so great that we can either ignore these organizations (as we characteristically do with the United Nations) or use them as instruments to accomplish our own international economic and political objectives (as we do with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund).

By contrast, factors beyond their control may make it difficult for less developed countries to establish conditions of statehood that we in the United States take for granted: a national identity, the rule of law, and a self-sufficient economy. Even the development of stable patronage systems may be hampered by societal conditions (e.g., nonfunctional justice systems, inability to meet even minimum standards of education and health care, political leadership based on “cults of personality” rather than on true pluralist political parties, and overly centralized and authoritarian political systems).59 These conditions generally impede the evolution of rational administrative structures and systems.60 For example, organizations in many less developed countries share common structural and managerial attributes that differ from those typically found in North America, Europe, and Japan: low levels of role specialization, formalism, and morale, and high levels of centralization, paternalism, authoritarian leadership, rigid stratification, and dysfunctional conflict.61

Clearly the most significant difference between the evolution of public personnel management in the United States and in developing countries today is that we in this country were able to first progress from patronage to civil service, second integrate them into an effectiveness model that combined efficiency and patronage, third integrate affirmative action and collective bargaining into the mix, and finally establish the boundaries between public personnel management and emergent market-based techniques like privatization and service contracting.62 By contrast, fledgling personnel systems in less developed countries are likely to face obstacles—pressure for patronage; underpaid and poorly qualified civil servants; and inadequate public program planning, budgeting, management, and evaluation. A less developed country that has successfully moved from patronage to civil service still faces pressure from unions and the emergent middle class for high levels of public employment, and pressure from lenders to reduce public employment and favor export-oriented agriculture, mining, and logging activities over the domestic industries and services needed to achieve economic and social development. As hard as this evolution has been for us, think how much harder it is for developing countries to establish functional civil service systems, combat patronage, deal with politically powerful unions, and balance demands for contracting and divestiture from international lenders and corporations.63 How well would we have done if we had had to develop in the same way, facing these conflicts simultaneously rather than sequentially?

Table 1-5 shows the factors that affect public personnel systems.

Building Governance Capacity through Reciprocal Technology Transfer

In a world focused on building networked governance capacity, it is best to act on the principle that technology transfer—the diffusion and adoption of innovations from their place of origin to other geographic areas and policy settings—is a reciprocal exchange between producers and consumers.64 Therefore, a final lesson for us in the United States is that many public HRM innovations come from outside the country.65 The U.S. experience with “reinventing government” owes much to the neoliberalism of Margaret Thatcher in England.66 Many recent suggestions for Social Security reform are derived from the market-based public employee pension systems long used in Chile;67 students of race relations in the United States are intrigued by South Africa's structural and behavioral transition from apartheid toward democratic pluralism;68 and democratic theorists study the high rate of political participation in Costa Rica, achieved through political education in schools, youth elections, and literacy. As we seek to innovate, and to “do more with less,” it is always wise to consider what we can learn from others as well as what they can learn from us.

TABLE 1-5

How Country Conditions Affect Public Personnel Systems

1. TRANSITION FROM INDEPENDENCE TO A FUNCTIONAL PATRONAGE SYSTEM
Negative Indicators •High reliance on charismatic leadership •Restricted freedom of speech and press •High emphasis on export of agricultural products and raw materials •Capital flight •Repression based on race, ethnicity, or class •Inadequate electoral process	Positive Indicators •Stable political parties •Open information and free media •Balanced, domestically focused economic growth, including professional/technical •Domestic reinvestment of capital •Some social justice •Functioning electoral process
2. TRANSITION FROM PATRONAGE TO A FUNCTIONAL CIVIL SERVICE SYSTEM
Negative Indicators •Government process considered low on effectiveness, rationality, and transparency •Widespread patronage appointments, and job retention based on salary “kickbacks” •High unemployment or underemployment •Public sector the “employer of last resort” •Underpaid, underqualified employees •Widespread employment discrimination based on race, gender, or ethnicity •High degree of administrative formalism •High role of the military in civil society and government •Reforms due mainly to international economic and political pressure	Positive Indicators •Government process considered high on effectiveness, rationality, and transparency •Civil service law, public personnel agency, and policies and procedures •Low unemployment or underemployment •Balanced economic growth/development •Adequately paid, qualified civil service •Low level of employment discrimination based on race, gender, or ethnicity •Low degree of administrative formalism •Reduced role of the military in civil society and government •Reforms due mainly to domestic political, social, and economic pressure
3. TRANSITION BEYOND CIVIL SERVICE TO A MATURE PUBLIC PERSONNEL SYSTEM
Negative Indicators •Overrigidity, uniformity, and centralization of HRM policies and practices •Overemphasis on employee rights or on managerial efficiency •Over- or underemployment in the public sector	Positive Indicators •Balance of flexibility/rigidity, centralization and decentralization, and uniformity and variation •Balance between employee rights and managerial efficiency •Balanced public and private employment

Summary

We can view public HRM from several perspectives. First, it is the functions (planning, acquisition, development, and discipline) needed to manage human resources in public agencies. Second, it is the process for allocating public jobs as scarce resources. Third, it reflects the influence of seven symbiotic and competing values (political responsiveness/representation, efficiency, individual rights, and social equity under the traditional progovernmental paradigm; and individual accountability, downsizing and decentralization, and community responsibility under the emergent privatization and partnerships paradigms) over the criteria and process for allocating public jobs. Fourth, it is the systems (laws, rules, and procedures) used to express these abstract values—political appointments, civil service, collective bargaining, and affirmative action under the traditional model; and alternative mechanisms and flexible employment relationships under the emergent paradigms of privatization and partnerships. 69

Conceptually, we can view U.S. public HRM as a historical process through which new systems emerge to champion emergent values, are integrated with the mix, and are in turn supplemented—neither supplanted nor replaced—by their own successors. From a practical perspective, this means that public HRM is laden with the contradictions in policy and practice resulting from these often unwieldy and unstable combinations of values and systems, and is fraught with the inherent difficulties of utilizing competitive and collaborative systems to achieve diverse goals. Civil service is the predominant public HRM system because it has articulated rules and procedures for performing the whole range of HRM functions. Other systems, though incomplete, are nonetheless legitimate and effective influences over one or more HRM functions.

The evolution of public personnel management in developing countries reflects a process similar and yet different from that we are familiar with in the United States. On the one hand, pressures for modernization and democratization tend to parallel though lag behind those in the Western world; Western consultants introduce administrative reforms; and Western lenders often mandate them as a condition of continued credit. On the other hand, each country's administrative systems and innovations reflect its own history, culture, and conditions. Yet beyond this, most developing countries face the difficult prospect of developing civil service systems to move past patronage, curbing the power of politically influential unions while maintaining employee rights, and achieving the benefits of privatization while avoiding its pitfalls.

Key Terms

administrative effectiveness 7

affirmative action systems 8

Civil Service Reform Act of (1978) 7

civil service (merit) system 5

civil service reform 13

collective bargaining 5

community responsibility 9

corruption 15

decentralized government 9

democratization 15

downsizing 14

efficiency 15

employee rights 4

faith-based organizations (FBOs) 10

fragile states 18

franchise agreements 11

governance capacity 16

government capacity 16

human resource management (HRM) 3

individual accountability 14

individual rights 7

kickbacks 15

merit system 5

Merit Systems Protection Board (USMSPB) 7

National Performance Review 9

nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) 9

nonstandard work arrangements (NSWA) 10

Office of Personnel Management (USOPM) 7

partnerships 10

Pendleton Act (1883) 5

personnel management 3

planning, acquisition, development, sanction (PADS) 4

Plum Book 5

political patronage system 7

political responsiveness 4

political representation 4

privatization 8

public personnel systems 10

purchase-of-service agreements 10

regulatory incentives 11

representative bureaucracy 8

scientific management 6

Senior Executive Service (SES) 7

social equity 4

spoils system 5

subsidy arrangements 11

tax incentives 11

temporary employees 14

technology transfer 20

third-party government 10

values 4

vouchers 11

Discussion Questions

  1. Identify and describe the four public personnel management functions (PADS).

  2. Why are public jobs scarce resources? What is the significance of this observation?

  3. What are the four competing values that have traditionally affected the allocation of public jobs? What three nongovernment values that have emerged recently conflict with them?

  4. What is a personnel system?

  5. Identify and describe the four traditional competing public personnel systems. What are the two emergent antigovernment personnel systems that have recently been added to them?

  6. Why is it possible to trace the development of public personnel management as conflict and symbiosis among alternative personnel systems?

  7. How would you evaluate state civil service reform efforts in Florida, Georgia, and Texas?

  8. In what respects is the evolution of public personnel management in developing countries similar to and different from its evolution in the United States? Why?

  9. What can we learn from other countries that might help us with our own HRM issues?

10. As responsible public administrators and public personnel managers, what can we do to promote the development of rational and transparent government, at home and abroad?

Exercise: Values and Functions in Public HRM

Identify the appropriate value(s), systems, and functions in these examples. Explain your choices.

  1. A state is going to fill a vacancy in its community development agency. The state representative who controls the appropriations committee for all legislation involving the agency has suggested that an applicant from her district fill a high-level position in the civil service. A major contributor to the governor's reelection campaign contends that a prominent real estate developer should fill the job. Neither candidate has the education or experience specified as desirable in the job description.

  2. A federal agency is considering a layoff. It anticipates a budget shortfall that is going to require cutbacks in personnel since the legislature has shown no indication that it is willing to raise taxes. The agency director has suggested that it compute a layoff score for each employee, based primarily on the person's performance appraisal. The Federation of Employees, which is the recognized bargaining agent for the agency's employees, strongly objects and proposes that the layoffs be based on seniority.

  3. A county anticipates a request by surrounding cities to provide water services for all county residents. This will require upgrading the skills of a substantial number of county employees and will provide those employees with opportunities for advancement. The union insists that the training slots be allocated to current employees on a seniority basis. The affirmative action officer, seeing this as an opportunity to increase the number of minorities in higher paying positions, proposes to set aside several of the openings for current minority employees.

  4. A city government is looking for ways to reduce costs. The city commission amends its charter to remove the sanitation department from the civil service system. This in effect nullifies the collective bargaining agreement between the city and its unionized sanitation employees. The city lays off all these employees and instead contracts for solid waste services provided by an outside private contractor.

  5. A state government closes many of its public parks and recreation areas because prison construction has taken an increasing share of state revenues and caused corresponding budget cuts in many other state agencies. It has increased user fees at others, in an effort to generate revenues sufficient to keep the parks open. The three results from this are all predictable. The number of visitors at state parks and recreation areas declines as higher user fees exclude many people. Those visitors that do come to the parks complain increasingly about inadequate facilities and maintenance. Finally, attendance and profits at private recreation theme parks (Disney World, Busch Gardens, etc.) increases dramatically.

Case Study: Political Clearance for “Buck” Pleake

Reaction against political patronage systems focused at the federal level in 1883 when the assassination of newly elected President Garfield by a disappointed job seeker caused an outpouring of criticism against the inefficiencies of the spoils system. Nevertheless, patronage remained a powerful force at the state and local levels, especially in agencies like corrections, public works, transportation, and county sheriff. During the 1970s and 1980s, newly elected officials routinely fired the patronage employees appointed by their predecessors and replaced them with their own appointees. They received their jobs for having supported the newly elected official's candidacy—and sometimes because of an informal commitment to “voluntarily” return a percentage of their salaries as a direct political contribution, or as a disguised contribution through the purchase of tickets to political dinners or other fund-raising events.

Although elected officials and other supporters of patronage systems defended the contributions as voluntary, in reality employees who quit contributing risked losing their jobs, because local party leaders declined to give them the political clearance they needed to certify their loyalty for the patronage position. This is what happened to “Buck” Pleake, a long-time Indiana State employee who had to reapply for political clearance to retain his job. In fact, the requirement was impossible to meet and was imposed deliberately because he had chosen to test the “voluntary” nature of the campaign contributions required of all employees by ceasing to contribute.

After reading the background information on the case, answer the following questions.

  1. Was “Buck” Pleake's political contribution voluntary or involuntary?

  2. Why did the Indiana State Employees Association raise the issue with the Governor?

  3. What were the governor's conflicting responsibilities in the case? How did he resolve them?

  4. What is the proper balance between competencies and political or personal loyalty in determining suitability for a government job? Why?

  5. What has been the relationship between the political, social, and economic conditions in the United States and our evolution toward more diverse and elaborate public personnel systems?

  6. To what extent is this U.S. experience comparable with that of the developing countries?

https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781317344926/epubcfi/6/14%5B%3Bvnd.vst.idref%3DM7%5D!/4/372/4/2%400:31

Notes

1. The General Accountability Office (GAO) (2008). The Plum Book (United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions). Available at: www.gpoaccess.gov/plumbook/index.html (accessed on April 13, 2009).

2. The White House (2009). Appointments. Available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/appointments/ (accessed on April 13, 2009).

3. US-INFO (2006). A history of federal civil service. Biography of an ideal. Available at: http://www.opm.gov/BiographyofAnIdeal/ (accessed on February 23, 2008).

4. Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. P.L. 95–454, October 13, 1978.

5. Heclo, H. (1977). A government of strangers. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.

6. Sayre, W. (1948). The triumph of techniques over purpose. Public Administration Review, 8: 134–137; and Fisher, J. (1945). Let's go back to the spoils system. Harper's, 191; 362–368.

7. Jost, K. (June 22, 2007). Has the Justice Department become too politicized? The CQ Researcher, 17 (24): 553–576.

8. West, William F., and Robert F. Durant (2000). Merit, management, and neutral competence: Lessons from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, FY 1988-FY 1997. Public Administration Review, 60 (2): 111–122.

9. Mosher, F. (1982). Democracy and the public service (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

10. National Performance Review (1993). From red tape to results: Creating a government that works better and costs less. Executive summary. Washington, DC: US GPO; and National Performance Review (1993). Reinventing human resource management: Accompanying report of the National Performance Review. Washington, DC: US GPO.

11. Osborne, D., and T. Gaebler (1992). Reinventing government: How the entrepreneurial spirit is transforming the public sector. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley Longman.

12. Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, H.R. 3734, 104th Congress, 2nd Session.

13. Welfare-to-Work program, adopted in 1997 as an amendment to The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA).

14. Community Services Block Grant Program, Reauthorization Act of 1998 (P.L. 105–285).

15. Community Services Block Grant Program for Mental Health and Drug Treatment Program. The Children's Health Act (2000). Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Washington, DC.

16. Executive Order 13198. Agency Responsibilities With Respect to Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Federal Register 66FR 8497 (1/31/01); Executive Order 13280. Responsibilities of the Department of Agriculture and the Agency for International Development With Respect to Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Federal Register 67, 77145 (12/16/02).

17. Rockefeller Institute of Government (2003). The public benefit of private faith: Religious organizations and the delivery of social services. Albany, NY: Rockefeller IOG.

18. Frederickson, Patricia, and Rosanne London (May/June 2000). Disconnect in the hollow state: The pivotal role of organization capacity in community-based development organizations. Public Administration Review, 60 (3): 230–239.

19. Eikenberry, Angela, and Jodie Kluver (2004). The marketization of the nonprofit sector: Civil society at risk? Public Administration Review, 64 (2): 132–140.

20. Kosar, Devin (2006). Privatization and the federal government: An introduction. Washington, DC: Congressional Research service; O'Looney, John A. (1998). Outsourcing state and local government services: Decision-making strategies and management methods. Greenwood, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group; and Martin, Lawrence L. (2002). Contracting for service delivery: Local government choices. Washington, DC: International City/County Management Association.

21. Siegel, Gilbert B. (March 1999). Where are we on local government service contracting? Public Productivity and Management Review, 22 (3): 365–388; O'Looney, John (1998). Outsourcing state and local government services: Decision making strategies and management methods. Westport, CT: Greenwood; and Martin, Lawrence L (1999). Contracting for service delivery: Local government choices. Washington, DC: International City/County Management Association.

22. Mastracci, Sharon H., and James R. Thompson (2005). Nonstandard work arrangements in the public sector: Trends and issues. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 25; 299ff; and Brown, Judith (April 2005). Flexible working arrangements can be a legal landmine. IPMAHR News, p. 1ff.

23. Light, Paul (1999). The true size of government. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.

24. Houseman, S. (2001). Why employers use flexible staffing arrangements: Evidence from an establishment survey. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 55; 149–170.

25. Selden, Sally C. (2006). Classifying and exploring trends in state personnel systems. In J. E. Kellough and L. G. Nigro (Eds.). Civil service reform in the states: Personnel policies and politics at the subnational level. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, pp. 59–76.

26. Hays, Stephen W., and Jessica E. Sowa (2006). A broader look at the “accountability” movement: Some grim realities in state civil service systems. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 26 (2): 102–117.

27. Cayer, N. Joseph, and Charles Kime (2006). Human resources reform in Arizona—A mixed picture. In J. Edward Kellough and Lloyd Nigro (Eds.). Civil service reform in the states: Personnel policies and politics at the subnational level. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 239–257.

28. Naff, Katherine (2006). Prospects for civil service reform in California: A triumph of technique over purpose? In J. Edward Kellough and Lloyd Nigro (Eds.). Civil service reform in the states: Personnel policies and politics at the subnational level. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 259–278.

29. Riccucci, Norma (2006). Civil service reform in New York: A quiet revolution. In J. Edward Kellough and Lloyd Nigro (Eds.). Civil service reform in the states: Personnel policies and politics at the subnational level. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 303–313.

30. Hays, Stephen, Chris Byrd, and Samuel Wilkins (2006). South Carolina's human resource management system: The model for states with decentralized personnel systems. In J. Edward Kellough and Lloyd Nigro (Eds.). Civil service reform in the states: Personnel policies and politics at the subnational level. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 171–201.

31. Fox, Peter, and Robert Lavigna (2006). Wisconsin state government: Reforming human resources management while retaining merit principles and cooperative labor relations. In J. Edward Kellough and Lloyd Nigro (Eds.). Civil service reform in the states: Personnel policies and politics at the subnational level. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 279–302.

32. Nigro, Lloyd, and J. Edward Kellough (2006). Civil service reform in Georgia: A view from the trenches. In J. Edward Kellough and Lloyd Nigro (Eds.). Civil service reform in the states: Personnel policies and politics at the subnational level. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 117–144; and Nigro, Lloyd, and J. Edward Kellough (2006). The states and civil service reform: Lessons learned and future prospects. In J. Edward Kellough and Lloyd Nigro (Eds.). Civil service reform in the states: Personnel policies and politics at the subnational level. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 315–324.

33. Bowman, James, Jonathan P. West, and Sally Gertz (2006). Radical reform in the sunshine state. In J. Edward Kellough and Lloyd Nigro (Eds.). Civil service reform in the states: Personnel policies and politics at the subnational level. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 145–170.

34. Coggburn, Jerrel (2006). At-will employment in government: insights from the state of Texas. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 26 (2): 158–177; and Coggburn, Jerrel (2006). The decentralized and deregulated approach to state human resources management in Texas. In J. Edward Kellough and Lloyd Nigro (Eds.). Civil service reform in the states: Personnel policies and politics at the subnational level. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 203–237.

35. Battaglio, R. Paul, and Stephen Condrey (2006). Civil service reform: Examining state and local government cases. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 26 (2): 118–138; Kearney, Richard (2006). The labor perspective on civil service reform in the states. In J. Edward Kellough and Lloyd Nigro (Eds.). Civil service reform in the states: Personnel policies and politics at the subnational level. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 77–93; and Lindquist, Stephanie, and Stephen Condrey (2006). Public employment reforms and constitutional due process. In J. Edward Kellough and Lloyd Nigro (Eds.). Civil service reform in the states: Personnel policies and politics at the subnational level. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 95–114.

36. Jackson, Oscar (May 2007). Public servants and public service. IPMA-HR News, pp. 1ff.

37. Kellough, Edward, and Lloyd Nigro (2006). Personnel policy and public management: The critical link. In J. Edward Kellough and Lloyd Nigro (Eds.). Civil service reform in the states: Personnel policies and politics at the subnational level. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 1–10.

38. Hsu, Spencer (September 4, 2000). Death of “big government” alters region: Less-skilled D.C. workers lose out as area prospers. Washington Post, p. A1+.

39. Brewer, Gene, and Robert A. Maranto (2000). Comparing the roles of political appointees and career executives in the U.S. Federal executive branch. American Review of Public Administration, 30 (1): 69–86.

40. Wilson, George (2006). The rise of at-will employment and racial inequality in the public sector. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 26 (2): 178–188.

41. Cohen, S., and W. Eimicke (1994). The overregulated civil service. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 15 (1): 11–27.

42. Peters, B. Guy, and Donald J. Savoie (1994). Civil service reform: Misdiagnosing the patient. Public Administration Review, 54; 418–425.

43. Milward, H. Brinton (1996). Introduction: Symposium on the hollow state: Capacity, control, and performance in interorganizational settings. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 6 (4): 193–197.

44. Moe, Ronald C. (1987). Exploring the limits of privatization. Public Administration Review, 47: 453–460.

45. Drummond, H. (1998). Is escalation always irrational? Organization Studies, 19: 911–929; and Kisfalvi, V. (2000). The threat of failure, the perils of success and CEO character: Sources of strategic persistence. Organization Studies, 21; 611–639.

46. Lewis, M. (2000). Exploring paradox: Toward a more comprehensive guide. Academy of Management Review, 25; 760–776.

47. Soni, Vidu (2004). From crisis to opportunity: Human resource challenges for the public sector in the twenty-first century. Review of Policy Research, 21 (2): 157–178.

48. Savas, Emanuel S. (2000). Privatization and public-private partnerships. New York: Chatham House.

49. Halley, A. (1997). Applications of boundary theory to the concept of service integration in the human services. Administration in Social Work, 21 (3/4): 145–168.

50. Price, T. (August 3, 2007). Corporate social responsibility. The CQ Researcher, 17 (28): 649–672.

51. Underhill, Jack, and Ray Oman (2007). A critical review of the sweeping federal civil service changes: The case of the departments of Homeland Security and Defense. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 27 (4): 401–420; Naff, Katherine, and Meredith Newman (2004). Symposium: Federal civil service reform: Another legacy of 9/11? Review of Public Personnel Administration, 24 (3): 191–201.

52. Klingner, Donald (2006). Diffusion and adoption of innovations: A development perspective. In Guido Bertucci (Ed.). Innovations in governance and public administration: Replicating what works. New York: UN/DESA/DPADM, pp. 55–60.

53. Hirsch, Darryl (November 1999). Merit systems in Western Democracies #1: An introduction to merit in Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. Ottawa, ON: Research Directorate, the Public Service Commission of Canada.

54. Salgado, Rene (1997). Public administration for results: Choice, design and sustainability in institutional development and civil service reform. DPP Working Paper Series No. 106. Washington, DC: Interamerican Development Bank.

55. Collier, Paul (2007). The bottom billion. New York: Oxford University Press.

56. Hood, Christopher, and B. Guy Peters, with Grace O. M. Lee (Eds.) (2003). Reward for high office: Asian and Pacific rim states. London: Routledge.

57. Bardach, Eugene (2000). Practical guide for policy analysis: The eightfold path to more effective problem solving. New York: Chatham House; and Jones, Larry and Donald Kettl (2003). Assessing public management reform in an international context. International Public Management Review, 4 (1): 1–16.

58. Darrough, Masako N. (2000). Privatization and corruption: Patronage vs. spoils. International Public Management Journal, 2 (2): 273–298.

59.Klingner, Donald E. (December 2000). South of the border: Problems and progress in implementing new public management reforms in Mexico today. American Review of Public Administration, 30 (4): 365–373.

60. Ruffing-Hilliard, Karen, in Ali Farazmand (1991). Merit reform in Latin America: A comparative perspective. Handbook of comparative and development public administration. New York: Marcel Dekker, pp. 301–312.

61. Kettl, Donald (1997). The global revolution in public management: Driving themes, missing links. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 16 (3): 446–462.

62. Klingner, Donald E., and Mohamed G. Sabet (2006). Contemporary public human resource management: Patronage, civil service, privatization, and service contracting. In Krishna Tummala (Ed.). Encyclopedia of life support systems. New York: UNESCO.

63. Kearney, Richard C., and Steven W. Hays (Fall 1998). Reinventing government: The new public management and civil service systems in international perspective. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 18 (4): 38–54.

64. Rogers, Everett (2003). The diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). Glencoe: The Free Press.

65. Klingner, Donald, and Charles W. Washington (January 2000). Through the looking glass: Realizing the advantages of an international and comparative approach for teaching public administration. Journal of Public Affairs Education, 6 (1): 35–43.

66. Savoie, Donald J. (1990). Public management development: A comparative perspective. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 3: 40–52.

67. Mesa-Lago, Carmelo (1996). Pension reform in Latin America: Importance and evaluation of privatization approaches. In William Glade (Eds.). Bigger economies, smaller governments: The role of privatization in Latin America. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 89–134; and Gunter Nagel, S. (1997). Developments in social security systems: Reflections on the work of the Council of Europe in this field. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 63 (2): 225–243.

68. Perkins, Edward J. (1990). New dimensions in foreign affairs: Public administration theory in practice. Public Administration Review, 50 (4): 490–493; and Harrison-Rockey, Samantha (1999). What state has been reached in the reform and transformation of the structures and systems of government? The case of South Africa. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 65 (2): 169–182.

69. Klingner, Donald E. (2006). Societal values and civil service systems in the United States. In J. E. Kellough and L. G. Nigro (Eds.). Civil service reform in the states: Personnel policies and politics at the subnational level. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 11–32.

(Klingner 35-37)

Klingner, Donald. Public Personnel Management, 6th Edition. Routledge, 20150717. VitalBook file.

The citation provided is a guideline. Please check each citation for accuracy before use.