Public Service Employment Relations Research Articles

Between state and market: the puzzle of employment relations in the public sector. A tribute to Lorenzo Bordogna

Public service employment relations are experiencing a heightened period of disruption. In many countries labour shortages are evident in essential services and industrial action has re-emerged forcibly. Governments In European countries are struggling to reconcile fiscal constraints, rising demand and to maintain an engaged workforce. These challenges shape employment relations in the sector and the contradictory policies and interests that govern the public sector. These puzzles and the way in which they are constructed and partially resolved by the state in different countries was at the centre of the scholarship of Lorenzo Bordogna, reviewed and celebrated in this article.

The reform of human resource management in the Irish public service

Abstract This paper reviews human resource management (HRM) reforms in the Irish public service over the past twenty-five years. The narrative is based around five HRM themes which have been the main focus of public service reform efforts: performance management, public service careers, leadership, strategic HRM and employment relations. The paper examines all available independent empirical research as well as internal and external reviews commissioned by the public service. The paper contributes to the empirical literature on HRM in the public service and in Ireland, and locates the pattern of HRM reform in the public service in Ireland in comparative context. The paper concludes by noting that while progress has been made, further energy is required in respect of HRM reform.

Stephen Bach and Lorenzo Bordogna (eds), Public Service Management and Employment Relations in Europe: Emerging from the Crisis

Stephen Bach and Lorenzo Bordogna (eds), <i>Public Service Management and Employment Relations in Europe: Emerging from the Crisis</i>

Book Review: Public Service Management and Employment Relations in Europe: Emerging from the Crisis edited by Stephen Bach and Lorenzo Bordogna

Book Review: <i>Public Service Management and Employment Relations in Europe: Emerging from the Crisis</i> edited by Stephen Bach and Lorenzo Bordogna

Public Service Management and Employment Relations in Europe: Emerging from the Crisis, edited by StephenBach and LorenzoBordogna. Routledge, New York and London, 2016, 328 pp, ISBN: 978‐1‐138‐85146‐7, $144, hardback.

British Journal of Industrial RelationsVolume 56, Issue 1 p. 227-228 Book Review Public Service Management and Employment Relations in Europe: Emerging from the Crisis, edited by Stephen Bach and Lorenzo Bordogna. Routledge, New York and London, 2016, 328 pp, ISBN: 978-1-138-85146-7, $144, hardback. Laust Høgedahl, Laust Høgedahl orcid.org/0000-0001-7712-4069 Search for more papers by this author Laust Høgedahl, Laust Høgedahl orcid.org/0000-0001-7712-4069 Search for more papers by this author First published: 30 November 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12289Citations: 1Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume56, Issue1BJIR Symposium on Corporate Social Responsibility and Labour StandardsMarch 2018Pages 227-228 RelatedInformation

Book Review: Public Service Management and Employment Relations in Europe. Emerging from the Crisis

Book Review: Public Service Management and Employment Relations in Europe. Emerging from the Crisis

Reframing public service employment relations: The impact of economic crisis and the new EU economic governance

This article introduces six national studies covering 11 countries of the EU-15, analysing the impact of government austerity measures on the working conditions of public employees and on public sector employment relations. It stresses how international financial markets and supranational actors have altered the dynamics of employment relations in a sector traditionally considered sheltered from external forces. Nevertheless, public sector employment relations remain distinctive compared to the private sector. There has been increased government unilateralism in the determination of pay and conditions, and public sector trade unions face obvious difficulties.

Public service employment relations in an era of austerity: The case of Denmark

This article analyses the impact of the economic crisis on the public sector in Denmark. It first examines the overall public sector responses and presents local case studies, before offering a comparative perspective with other Nordic countries. The article concludes that responses to the crisis in Denmark mostly involve ‘resetting recent reform’. The crisis has affected on job levels and employment relations, but other drivers are also important. Analysis at the local level reveals that the reduction in job levels is as much an expression of the implementation of pre-crisis reforms and demographic change as a manifestation of a direct crisis impact. The moderate impact of the crises on public sector reforms is also found in Norway, Finland and Sweden.

Greek public service employment relations: A Gordian knot in the era of sovereign default

Public sector employment relations are at the centre of the Troika’s programmes for Greece. These require a reduction of primary public expenditure by 10 percent of GDP, a total redesign of public services and massive privatizations. Public wages have been subject to incremental cuts, together with moves towards weakening the special status of public sector employment. It remains an open question whether the urgent pressure to reduce public expenditure through successive quantitative adjustments may result in successful structural reforms towards a leaner and more efficient public sector.

Public service employment restructuring in the crisis in the UK and Ireland: Social partnership in retreat

The crisis has had major consequences for public service employment relations in the liberal market economies of the UK and Ireland. However, variations in the process of fiscal consolidation reflect different legacies of social partnership, prior patterns of public management reform and different relationships to the eurozone. The measures adopted nevertheless reflect a similar concern to decrease public sector employment, worsen pay and conditions and increase work effort. Despite the deterioration of terms and conditions of employment, industrial action has been muted, reflecting the severe weakness of trade unions. Both cases illustrate that governments have become less concerned to gain trade union support to push through austerity measures.

Economic crisis and the politics of public service employment relations in Italy and France

This article analyses the impact of government austerity measures on the working conditions of public employees and public sector employment relations in Italy and France. The timing and severity of these measures have differed, given the different conditions of public finances in the two countries. The impact on employment levels, wages, working conditions and pensions has generally been more pronounced in Italy than in France. The reform of public sector employment relations institutions predated the economic crisis; in Italy the aim was to limit union prerogatives and the scope of collective bargaining, in France to strengthen social dialogue institutions. But in both cases the ultimate government power to determine terms and conditions of employment unilaterally has been clearly reaffirmed.

Shrinking the state or the Big Society? Public service employment relations in an era of austerity

AbstractThe Big Society is an integral part of the coalition's plans for public service retrenchment, but it is premature to dismiss it as exclusively concerned with expenditure cuts and privatisation. The Big Society signals the government's ambition to transform public services and it is the rubric that is being used to shrink the state and undermine long‐standing systems of public service employment relations. This article considers the origins and meaning of the Big Society and then assesses its consequences for public service provision and the workforce. The Big Society is integrally connected to deficit reduction with the voluntary sector and an increased emphasis on volunteering promoted as a more user‐centred and cost‐effective way of delivering public services in tough times. For the workforce, more competition between diverse providers in conjunction with budget cuts is placing downward pressure on terms and conditions and encouraging employers to question the continuation of national pay determination in many parts of the public sector.

Convergence towards an NPM programme or different models? Public service employment relations in Italy and France

This article analyses the transformations of public service employment relations in Italy and France over the last decades, within the context of a wider administrative reform and in the light of the new public management (NPM) approach. It shows that despite a common administrative tradition, the reform trajectories in the two countries have started to diverge in the early 1980s, and even more since the 1990s. Italy adopted more closely the NPM precepts, especially in the 1997–2007 period, and some of the regulatory difficulties it has experienced are probably connected with the theoretical weaknesses of these precepts. France has been more cautious in moving in this direction, preserving several features typical of its administrative tradition to begin with the special employment status of its public employees, a model which has been labelled as neo-Weberian. In comparative perspective, the article confirms the opportunity to analyse different national reform trajectories, rooted into country-specific legal and institutional traditions, rather than hypothesise universal processes of convergence towards the sole regulatory model represented by the NPM.

Varieties of new public management? The reform of public service employment relations in the UK and USA

This article analyses developments in public service employment relations in the UK and USA over the last two decades that are associated with the implementation of new public management (NPM) style reforms. We examine developments in performance management, patterns of wage determination and trade union responses to these reforms. Although there are some similarities in the reform agenda, there are marked variations in the interpretation and implementation of NPM reforms, which reflect differing administrative traditions and the malleability of NPM reforms.

Moral Hazard, Transaction Costs and the Reform of Public Service Employment Relations

This article analyses the reform of public service employment relations inspired by the New Public Management (NPM) approach, which has challenged both the traditional `sovereign employer' and `model employer' approaches to public service employment regulation. It envisages a double process of convergence: between public and private sector employment relations within each country, and in public service employment relations between different countries. However, the outcomes are mixed, and unexpected or perverse effects have often followed the reform attempts. These stem from a neglect of the distinctiveness of the public sector employer as a political institution and an excessive attention to moral hazard and agency costs. What is needed is a richer variety of mechanisms, more sophisticated and less unilateral than those borrowed from agency theory

Book reviews

Books reviewed:Alan Campbell, Nina Fishman, and John McIlroy, British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics Vol I: The Post‐War Compromise, 1945–64. Vol II: The High Tide of Trade Unionism, 1964–79Jack Eaton, Comparative Employment RelationsRobert Taylor, The TUC: From the General Strike to New UnionismStephen Bach, Lorenzo Bordogna, Guiseppe Della Rocca and David Winchester, (eds) Public Service Employment Relations in Europe: Transformation, modernization or inertia?

Studying State Employment Relations: A Maturing Discipline

Susan Corby and Geoff White (eds.), Employee Relations in the Public Services: Themes and Issues , London: Routledge 1999, £60.00, paper £19.99, x+238 pp. Stephen Bach, Lorenzo Bordogna, Guiseppe della Rocca and David Winchester (eds.), Public Service Employment Relations in Europe: Transformation, Modernization or Inertia? , London: Routledge, 1999, £60.00, paper £20.99, xi+244 pp. Any text on, or review of, labour regulation in the public sector has traditionally begun by remarking on the relative historical neglect of the subject compared to the allegedly more exciting world of its private-sector equivalent. State employment relationships have often been characterised by a number of relatively exceptional features, many of which have not tended to enthuse researchers. These traits include: the abiding, but complicating, role, of political contingency; highly bureaucratic and introverted institutional regulation; politically quiescent labour relations; and virtual absence of management as an independent actor. Additionally, many state workers are classed as public servants to whom restrictive and unpliable forms of legal status may apply, which can in turn affect such workers' scope to organise collectively.

Studying state employment relations: a maturing discipline

Susan Corby and Geoff White (eds.), Employee Relations in the Public Services: Themes and Issues, London: Routledge 1999, £60.00, paper £19.99, x+238 pp.Stephen Bach, Lorenzo Bordogna, Guiseppe della Rocca and David Winchester (eds.), Public Service Employment Relations in Europe: Transformation, Modernization or Inertia?, London: Routledge, 1999, £60.00, paper £20.99, xi+244 pp.Any text on, or review of, labour regulation in the public sector has traditionally begun by remarking on the relative historical neglect of the subject compared to the allegedly more exciting world of its private-sector equivalent. State employment relationships have often been characterised by a number of relatively exceptional features, many of which have not tended to enthuse researchers. These traits include: the abiding, but complicating, role, of political contingency; highly bureaucratic and introverted institutional regulation; politically quiescent labour relations; and virtual absence of management as an independent actor. Additionally, many state workers are classed as public servants to whom restrictive and unpliable forms of legal status may apply, which can in turn affect such workers' scope to organise collectively.

The management strategies of public service employers in Europe

This article examines the reform of public services management in Europe drawing on material from Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. It considers the limitations of interpreting changing public service employment relations in terms of a convergence towards the new public management and outlines an alternative interpretation of these reforms.

Edited by Wolodymyr Maksymiw

Creative technological change: the shaping of technology and organisations, Angus Bancroft Public Service Employment Relations in Europe: transformation, modernisation or inertia?, Chris Brewster East Asian Direct Investment in Britain,Christopher M. Dent