The World of Public Personnel Management

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The World of Public Personnel Management

• From Klinger, Donald E. Nalbandian, John
  (2003) Public Personnel Management

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Introduction

• Public personnel management has been studied
  extensively, from at least four perspectives.
• First, it is the functions needed to manage human
  resources in public agencies.
• Second, it is the process by which public jobs
  are allocated.

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• Third, it is the interaction among fundamental
  societal values that often conflict over who gets
  public jobs and how they are allocated.
• Finally, public personnel management is personnel
  systems --- the laws, rules, organizations, and
  procedures used to express these abstract values
  in fulfilling personnel functions.

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• In the United States, public personnel management
  is widely recognized as a critical element of
  democratic society and effective public
  administration.
• The development of public personnel management in
  the United States is complex because there are
  multiple levels of governments plus thousands of
  governments, each with its own personnel system.

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• Today, public personnel management in the United
  States may be described as a dynamic equilibrium
  among competing values, each championed by a
  particular personnel system, for allocating scare
  public jobs in a complex and changing
  environment.
• As one might expect, this conflict exhibits a
  commingling of technical decisions (how to do a
  personnel function) with a political ones (what
  value to favor what system to use).

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• Public personnel management consists of four
  fundamental functions needed to manage human
  resources in public organizations.
• These functions, designated by the acronym PADS,
  are planning, acquisition, development, and
  sanction.

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Public Jobs as scarce resources

• Basic decisions about public personnel management
  are important because jobs are the most visible
  way we measure economic and social status for
  individuals and groups.
• Public jobs are scare resources because tax
  revenues limit them, and their allocation is of
  enormous significance for the course of public
  policy making generally.

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• Because public jobs are scare and important,
  there is competition for them among individuals
  and more broadly among advocates of competing
  public personnel values and systems.

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Public personnel management functions 1
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Public personnel management functions 2
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The four traditional values

• Responsiveness
• Efficiency
• Individual right
• Social equity

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• Public personnel management may be seen as the
  continuous interaction among fundamental values
  that often conflict.

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Political responsiveness

• Political responsiveness is brief that government
  answers to the will of the people expressed
  through elected officials.
• Applicants political and personal loyalty is
  best ensured through an appointment process that
  considers political loyalty, along with education
  and experience, as indicators of merit.

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Political responsiveness

• Often, in order to promote responsive government,
  elected officials are authorized to fill a
  certain number of exempt positions through
  political appointment
• Responsiveness / Responsibility

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Organizational efficiency and effectiveness

• Organizational efficiency and effectiveness
  reflect the desire to maximize the ratio of
  inputs to outputs in any management process.
• This means that decisions about who to hire,
  reassign, or promote should be based on
  applicants and employees competencies, rather
  than political loyalty.

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• employees competencies1. Knowledge2.
  Skill3. Abilities
• KSAs

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Individual right

• Individual right emphasizes that individual
  citizens will be protected from unfair actions of
  government officials.
• Public employees rights to job security and due
  process are maintained through merit system rules
  and regulations that protect them from
  inappropriate partisan political pressure (such
  as requiring them to campaign for elected
  officials, or contribute a portion of their
  salary toward election campaigns, or run the risk
  of losing their jobs if they refuse.)

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Individual right

• In a parallel fashion, public employees who are
  union members will have recourse to work rules,
  contained in collective bargaining agreements
  that protect them from arbitrary management
  decisions.

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Social equity

• Social equity emphasizes fairness to groups like
  women, racial minorities, the disabled, and
  veterans, that would otherwise be disadvantaged
  by a market economy that accepts the legitimacy
  of discrimination hiring and in pay.

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Social equity

• Like individual rights, social equity is
  concerned with fairness. But unlike individual
  rights (which are based on personal attributes
  like education, experience, or seniority ),
  social equity is concerned with employment
  preferences based on membership in a protected
  class or group.

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Anti-Government Values

• Individual Accountability
• Limited and Decentralized Government
• Community Responsibility

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• The underlying contemporary political, social,
  and economic forces shaped three emerging
  anti-government values1. Individual
  Accountability2. Limited and Decentralized
  Government3. Community Responsibility for social
  services

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Individual Accountability

• Proponents of individual accountability expect
  that people will make individual choices
  consistent with their own goal, and accept
  responsibility for the consequences of their
  choices, rather than passing responsibility for
  their actions onto the rest of the society.

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Limited and Decentralized Government

• Proponents of limited and decentralized
  government believe, fundamentally, that
  government is to be feared for its power to
  arbitrarily or capriciously deprive individuals
  of their rights.

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Community Responsibility for social services

• They believe that governmental agencies effort
  need to be supplemented by not-for profit,
  non-governmental organization responsible for
  social services.

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Personnel System

• Political Patronage based on the applicants
  political or personal loyalty to the appointing
  official
• Civil Service System keep politics out of
  public personnel decision and to manage public
  agencies rationally and efficiently.

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• Collective Bargaining Contracts negotiated
  between an agencys managers and leaders of the
  union representing its employees.
• Affirmative Action

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Contemporary System

• Alternative Mechanisms
• Flexible employment relationships

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• This Chapter discusses the continued conflict and
  interaction among fundamental values, including
  the impact of performance contracting and
  privatization as alternatives to traditional
  civil service.
• And it discusses the evolution of public
  personnel systems under diverse conditions in
  developing countries, including the link between
  government capacity and democratization.