Malaysia as model

Abstract

This article uses a case study of public human resource management (HRM) in Malaysia to explore policy ‘transferability’, proposed as a refinement of Dolowitz and Marsh's policy transfer framework. HRM in the Malaysian civil service is found to be relatively performance-orientated, though that is qualified by the Government's affirmative action policies. Malaysia's approach is attributed to factors that have their roots in Malaysia's history: the pervasive respect for authority, the ethnic mix, its Anglo-Saxon orientation, the successful economy, the National Development Policy of 1990 and the personal role of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed. These factors suggest that public management is both shaped and constrained by its historical roots. The case suggests that successful policy transfer requires an understanding of those roots, especially when there is a significant distance in cultural, political, economic or linguistic terms between the countries transferred from and to.