Public Personnel Systems Research Articles

Public Service in Times of Politicized Crisis: How Combatting COVID-19 Reveals Threats to Merit Principles

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, politicization of public health policy has loomed over the governmental response in the United States. The scope of politicization is underscored by instances of political pressures faced by public employees across state and local government. Observation of such instances prompts questions regarding the implications of highly politicized crisis on public personnel systems. Using systematic qualitative content analysis of data from syndicated news articles, this study identifies publicized instances of adverse personnel actions experienced by public employees during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the identification of publicized instances, this study also explores legislative trends focusing on public personnel systems during highly politicized emergency conditions. Results outline the positional roles subject to adverse actions, along with traits of legislative activity changing public personnel systems in the states identified. Implications of the study and considerations for future research are then discussed.

How Can Scholars Help to Embed Institutions of Public-Sector Change? (Or Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was a Grad Student)

AbstractWhat is the purpose of the applied study of government? In this essay, I lay out one response—that scholars of this topic should help in the job of what I characterize as embedding institutions of public-sector change. Public institutions offer the key means to direct governance, but at the same time also risk becoming sclerotic, failing to adapt to public concerns. How can academics help resolve this duality, matching public values to contemporary challenges? First, we as scholars can play a role in purposeful problem framing. Second, we can study and document related behavior and empirical outcomes. Finally, we can design solutions. I illustrate these processes with examples from my own research, discussing performance management, administrative burdens, and public personnel systems.

Money Matters: Sector Differences, Competition, and the Public Personnel System

This study explores whether public personnel systems, particularly their compensation systems, are flexible and responsive to market wages in a competitive labor market. Focusing on registered nurses, we explore whether and how the public, private nonprofit, and for-profit labor markets influence each other in determining wages. We also examine if sector plays a role in determining wages. We use American Community Survey data from 2016 and 2017 to test these expectations. Fixed effects regressions and seemingly unrelated regressions with Chow tests reveal that higher wages in the dominant for-profit sector appear to drive up wages in the other two sectors, and vice versa. The results imply that public personnel systems are not so rigid and inflexible as perceived. Rather, they are sensitive to supply and demand and offer wages responding to competition from other sectors. Moreover, public employees do not ignore competitive opportunities in alternative employment markets in the private sectors. Students of public employment should not overlook the private sectors either. The markets are distinctive but not independent.

Akademik Kadrolar Açısından Norm Kadro Uygulamalarına Genel Bir Bakış

Kamu personel sistemlerinde nicel ve nitel yeterliliğe sahip personelin istihdamını sağlamak adına norm kadro uygulamaları dikkat çekmektedir. Ayrıca kamusal hizmetlerin etkin ve verimli sunulması, kamusal kaynakların yerinde kullanımı açısından özellikle personel istihdamında norm kadro uygulamalarının gerekliliği yadsınamaz. Ancak Türkiye’de kamusal alanlarda norm kadro uygulamaları personel çeşitliliğinden dolayı hem istihdam boyutunda hem de terfi standartlarında çeşitli sorunları beraberinde getirmektedir. 
 Çalışmanın amacı, kamu personel sisteminde özel kanun hükümlerine tabi olan akademik personelin istihdam ve terfileri açısından norm kadro uygulamalarının ortaya çıkardığı/çıkarabileceği çeşitli sorunlara dikkat çekmektir. Bu kapsamda öncelikle Türkiye'deki kamusal istihdam türü içinde akademik personelin yeri tespit edilmektedir. Akabinde norm kadro uygulamalarının gelişimi ve akademik alanda 2018 yılında yayımlanan “Devlet Yükseköğretim Kurumlarında Öğretim Elemanı Norm Kadrolarının Belirlenmesine ve Kullanılmasına İlişkin Yönetmelik” irdelenmiştir. Ek olarak literatüre yansıyan eserlerde norm kadro sistemine yönelik gözlemlenen sonuçlar dile getirilmiştir. Sonuç olarak akademik personel açısından norm kadro uygulamalarının istihdam ve özellikle terfide ciddi sorunlara neden olacağı çıkarımında bulunulmuştur.

Patronage in Illinois: The Political Subjugation of Public Administration

A series of court cases banned patronage except for leadership and confidential positions. In Cook County and Chicago, the Shakman Decree required the establishment of an antipatronage staffing system to ensure that political considerations did not enter into staffing decisions. Despite the court prohibitions and the antipatronage staffing systems, patronage continued to flourish. A number of unethical and illegal violations included falsifying exam scores and interviews, demanding political contributions for jobs and contracts, and covering up wrongdoing. These patronage abuses led to successful criminal prosecution of a number of individuals. Political influence had a corrupting effect on the government bureaucracy. At a time when many public personnel systems are moving toward at-will employment systems to provide flexibility and responsiveness to the political leaders, this direction might not be in the public’s best interest.

Trends and Best Practices in State and Local Human Resource Management

This article summarizes a few of themost interesting findings of a comprehensive survey of human resource management best practices in state and local government. The 4-year project has examined the most enlightened human resource management initiatives extant in government agencies and provides a number of appealing reform examples that might be transportable to other governmental settings, including federal agencies. Many of the findings challenge accepted notions about the intractable nature of public personnel systems and provide potential models that can be emulated in public agencies at every level of government.

Building a Public Personnel System for the City of Freedonia: A New Approach to Teaching Human Resources Management in an MPA Program

The Freedonia Project was introduced in a required MPA human resources management course in Spring 1999 as an innovative mechanism to facilitate learning about how American public personnel systems work. The Project, a semester-long simulation that calls for students to build a public personnel system from the ground up, introduces nonspecialists to the functional aspects of public human resources management and makes explicit the high degree of interdependence between and among them. This article serves as an interim report on the use of the project and details the results of a four-semester pilot test of the idea in the classroom. Discussed are learning objectives and outcomes, project design, and student and instructor evaluations that speak to the merits of the Freedonia Project as a pedagogical tool, as well as to its strengths and weaknesses.

Building Public HRM Capacity in Latin America and the Caribbean: What Works and What Doesn't

Public HRM in developing countries in Latin America and the Caribbean is different than in the United States because the development of administrative systems in general (and public personnel systems in particular) in less developed countries tend to evolve along a single track toward the model of increased rationality and transparency valued by international lenders as indicators of effective government and economic development. With respect to public HRM systems, this generally involves a sequential transition from statehood to patronage, from patronage to civil service, and from civil service to a range of alternative personnel systems. Development is a complex process affected more by economic, political and social conditions within each country, and their impact on civic culture, government and public administration. Examination of five examples from Latin America and the Caribbean shows that developing public HRM capacity can be done rightly or wrongly, depending on decision-makers' willingness to remember and learn from history and development management experience.

Public Personnel Management in the Caribbean: A Comparative Analysis of Trends in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and St. Vincent and Grenada

After first describing the characteristics of five Caribbean island nations (the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and St. Vincent and Grenada), this article discusses their respective public personnel management systems. Each country differs with respect to laws, structures and procedures. But they share common geographic and historical characteristics that have had a profound effect on public personnel management. Specifically, their common antecedents have affected how they develop civil service systems, training and evaluation, recruitment and selection, pay and benefits, and other aspects of the administrative career system. In conclusion, the article presents an analysis of common trends in the evolution of public personnel systems in all these countries, based on their common necessity to increase the effectiveness and rationality of the public services their governments provide.

Reinventing Public Personnel Management: Ethical Implications for Managers and Public Personnel Systems

The need to ensure responsible administration in government is an imperative concern for the field of public management. The interest in administrative responsibility is crucial because public administrators are the people who place government into action. They manage and direct the operations of federal, state, and local organizations providing essential services and programs. They issue directives and regulations, which give meaning to public policy, and in the process, substantive policy choices are made. In addition, in these capacities, government administrators act on behalf of the people. Ultimately, they must be accountable to the public interest. As a consequence, public servants bear important moral and ethical obligations. Indeed, much of the history of public administration in the United States has focused on the question of how those obligations might best be met.

The Public Service Ethic in the New Public Personnel Systems

A “public service ethic” implies more than just ethical behavior on the job; it also entails a dedication to the public interest and a commitment to mission accomplishment. This essay argues that the political need to make the government look smaller has led to more contracting out and analyzes the problem of promoting the principles of merit in private sector contractors. It then takes up the new challenge of public management: how to ensure that the public service ethic permeates all organizations and individuals engaged in executing the laws—not only those directly employed by the government in the traditional public service.

Public Personnel Management and Democratization: A View from Three Central American Republics

The development of stable democratic societies in Central America has been a popular news topic and a primary U.S. foreign policy objective for the past decade. Democratization has been a prime concern of social scientists in general (Barry, 1991; Booth, 1991; Booth & Seligson, 1989; Booth & Walker, 1989; Colburn, 1992; Coleman & Herring, 1991; Jonas, 1990; Out of the Ditch, 1992) and of political scientists in particular (Collier & Norden, 1992; Dix, 1991; Geddes, 1991 and 1994; Goodman, 1992; Graham, 1990; Karl, 1990; Lijphart, 1992; Mainwaring, O'Donnell, and Valenzuela, 1992; Sloan, 1989; and Wynia, 1990). In the United States, public personnel management is widely regarded as a critical element of democratic society (Mosher, 1982) and of effective public administration (Hays & Kearney, 1990; Shafritz et al., 1992). Although U.S. interest and aid for Central America has faded with the Sandinista threat (Robinson, 1991; Forgotten Central 1992), this region remains important. And public personnel management plays a critical role in four of the ten U.S. foreign policy objectives specified for the Central American democratization process during the 1990s (USAID, 1991; 9): (1) improving the administration of justice by increasing the independence, professionalism and effectiveness of the judiciary and police by upgrading judicial personnel through promotion of higher selection standards and effective training programs; (2) strengthening the ability of legislatures to conduct appropriate legal, economic and technical analyses of proposed legislation by trained professional staff; (3) strengthening local and municipal governments' effectiveness by enhancing their control over financial and human resources; and (4) promoting honesty and efficiency in government through transparency of decision-making processes and heightened accountability of civil service structures. Yet despite this consensus on the importance of public personnel management to the development of democratic government and society, little comparative research has been done on the development of public personnel management in Central America or its relationship to democratization there. Comparative administration texts by Heady (1991) and Riggs (1964) do discuss civil service reform, although they do not focus specifically on this topic or region. Several authors have written studies of public personnel systems in particular countries: Siegel & Nascimento (1965) on Brazil, Brautigam (1985) on Costa Rica, and Kearney (1966) on the Dominican Republic. Although these studies often include persuasive conceptual analyses of the civil service reform process, they are by nature limited in comparative focus. Two works that are both comprehensive and conceptual, although by now of primarily historical interest, are Fonseca Pimentel's (1966) analysis of Latin American civil service reform and Torres Padilla's (1968) description of Central American public personnel systems. Ruffing-Hilliard (1991) has written an excellent comprehensive conceptual analysis of the civil service reform process in Latin America, although its conclusions are documented by literature review rather than by original data. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to: 1. describe public personnel management in three Central American republics (Honduras, Panama, and Costa Rica); 2. evaluate public personnel management in each country; 3. present recommendations to enhance its effectiveness; 4. propose a general model for the development of public personnel management in Central America; and 5. delineate the relationship between the development of public personnel management and democratization in Central America. Characteristics of Public Personnel Management: Honduras, Panama, and Costa Rica The three Central American republics used as subjects in this research study are unique but related. …

Merit Protection in the Australian Public Service: A Comparative Perspective

Both Australia and the United States have reconfigured their public personnel systems to include a central personnel agency and a merit protection agency, but major differences exist in the operations of the latter bodies. The Australian Merit Protection and Review Agency (MPRA) uses a variety of committees to deal with appeals on personnel actions, with promotions being the primary subject of the appeals. Differences between the two countries in the types of appeals and in the appeal processes, themselves, are discussed. In the future, enforcing merit will become more complex as the position-based system yields to a more fluid personnel system.

A Comparative Analysis of United States and Japanese Public Personnel Systems

A Comparative Analysis of United States and Japanese Public Personnel Systems

Public Support for Comparable Worth in Georgia

Women's groups and some labor unions are increasingly pressing public personnel systems to pay women as much as men not only for equal but for work of comparable worth.' The State of Washington performed first important comparable worth study in 1974. The study estimated that male-dominated occupations paid 20 percent more than female-dominated occupations requiring similar knowledge and skills, mental demands, accountability, and working conditions.2 Since 1982, at least 35 state legislatures and U.S. Congress have considered or conducted comparable worth-related studies of their own personnel systems.3 Those states that have completed studies have uniformly found pay gaps between maleand femaledominated occupations of seemingly comparable worth -gaps ranging from 5 or 6 percent in North Carolina to 28 percent in New Jersey.4 Correcting these gaps could be very expensive. A recently overturned court decision, based on Washington State study, could have cost that state up to $1 billion in raises, back pay, promotions, and pension increases.5 Estimates for economy as a have gone as high as $320 billion, although comparable worth plans actually implemented have been much less costly.6 Comparable worth advocates claim that women have been segregated into a limited number of occupations through pressures of socialization and decisions of employers,7 and that work identified with women is always considered less valuable than that done by men, regardless of its difficulty or contribution.I They argue that public pay systems reflect this undervaluing of by uncritically accepting wages set in a discriminatory market, by allowing societal biases against women to distort whole evaluations, or by letting sexism creep into even most quantitatively sophisticated point factor evaluation systems.9 Remick defines comparable worth as the application of a single, bias-free point factor job evaluation system within a given establishment, across job families, both to rank-order jobs and to set salaries.' Although this definition is far from universally accepted, use of a quantitative job evaluation system rather than market to set wages is central to any comparable worth solution. Comparable worth opponents dispute claim that female-dominated occupations are underpaid, arguing that women's occupations pay less because their workers are less productive or because they offer non* What does public think of proposed policies of comparable worth for public employees? In a telephone survey we asked 558 Georgians their opinions on whether female-dominated occupations are underpaid because of discrimination and whether a comparable worth policy for public employees is feasible and desirable. Two findings emerge from these survey responses. (1) Proponents of comparable worth outnumber opponents by a ratio of three to one. (2) Inconsistencies in responses suggest that most citizens do not have strong and stable opinions about policy.

Day Care Programs and Public Employees: A New Initiative and Direction for Public Personnel Systems

Day Care Programs and Public Employees: A New Initiative and Direction for Public Personnel Systems

The Public Service in the Temporary Society

But there is a question prior to these which requires attention. It concerns the changing nature and probable future directions of the society from which the public services are drawn, within which they operate, and which they are presumed to serve. This essay therefore begins with some observations about the society and its demands upon government, including some of the underlying dilemmas which seem to me most salient to the public service of the near future. Its second part is a discussion of the probable implications of these social directions and dilemmas for public administrative organizations, the public service, public personnel systems, and the universities.