Review of Public Personnel Administration RSS feed -- OnlineFirst Articles

A Strategic Agenda for Public Human Resource Management Research

Perry, J. L. — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:58:12 PST

This article develops a strategic research agenda for public human resource management. The agenda originates from the perception that research about public human resources has matured during the Review of Public Personnel Administration’s 30 years of publication and now is an appropriate juncture to initiate an intentional and strategic agenda. The author identifies criteria for developing a strategic research agenda that seeks to advance useable knowledge about public human resource management, build theory, and mark out content distinctive to public institutions. The article inventories research as reported by the Review of Public Personnel Administration and two other leading human resource management journals. These inventories help to anchor the agenda in timely issues and to triangulate on distinctively public issues. The article concludes with five priority research agenda based on the criteria the author developed and the inventory of research: direct compensation, motivation, culture and political context, efficacy and effectiveness, and training and development.

Public Sector Labor-Management Relations: Change or Status Quo

Kearney, R. C. — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:58:12 PST

As unions in the private sector have continued on what appears to the pessimist to be a slow march into obscurity and irrelevance, public employee unions and collective bargaining are thriving in a majority of states. In this article, the author first provides a brief overview of the relevant scholarly research, and then changes the focus to the future of unionization and collective bargaining in the public and nonprofit sectors. It is suggested that the deck continues to be stacked against federal unions and collective bargaining, but that there are portents for significant gains in the state and local sectors, depending on bargaining-friendly changes in state and federal law.

Human Resources Management in a Changing World: Reassessing Public Human Resources Management Education

Llorens, J. J., Battaglio, R. P. — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:51:10 PST

Public administration scholars have gone to great lengths to assess both the extent of personnel reform efforts across the public sector and their impact on employee attitudes toward public sector employment. However, to the degree that these reforms represent the future of public sector human resources management (HRM), the field has yet to fully address how the education of future public servants and human resources professionals should be adjusted to reflect this transformation. This article seeks to address this issue by reevaluating those subject areas and competencies that have long been considered the core of public sector HRM education, proposing what new competencies should be introduced into the core in light of the contemporary reform environment and providing a preliminary assessment of the extent to which contemporary academic and practitioner-based educational programs reflect the current landscape of public sector HRM.

Workforce Diversity in the New Millennium: Prospects for Research

Pitts, D. W., Wise, L. R. — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:51:09 PST

Public organizations in the new millennium are tasked with a myriad of human resource management challenges that stem from workforce diversity, but the field of public administration has not produced a body of research that adequately assists them with these struggles. In 2000, Wise and Tschirhart called for "greater contribution from public administration scholars to the body of research focusing on how human diversity can best be managed to produce positive results." They found that existing research contributed little usable knowledge for diversity management policies and programs. The authors examine whether their call for more rigorous and more practice-oriented research has been heeded by identifying articles on workforce diversity published in a core set of public administration journals since 2000. A broad overview of the literature on diversity is provided, followed by a more focused discussion of empirical research on employment diversity, diversity management, and organizational outputs and outcomes. It is found that although diversity issues remain salient to public administration scholarship, usable knowledge is in short supply. A substantial share of this research can be categorized as focusing on representative bureaucracy issues. Few empirical studies test diversity effects or hypotheses. Some empirical work explains factors beyond the control of human resource policies or practicing managers, which makes findings less useful to practitioners. The research suffers from inadequate data, little innovation in methodology, and insufficient attention to empirical connections between diversity and organizational results.

The Success of Failure: The Paradox of Performance Pay

Bowman, J. S. — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:51:09 PST

This normative article examines the contemporary record of pay-for-performance plans in the federal government. These programs, extending back nearly two generations, have consistently malfunctioned. Nonetheless, the state of the field today is one of continued attempts to use the technique despite agency history and research data that document its problematic nature. Based on scholarly literature, news media reports, and interview data, the analysis assesses the practical experience, policy findings, and political realities of this compensation method. The discussion raises questions about rational decision-making models and suggests that belief in performance pay is akin to an urban legend.

Thirty Years of ROPPA: Past Trends and Future Prospects

West, J. P. — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:51:09 PST

In the fall of 1980, the inaugural issue of the Review of Public Personnel Administration was published. This symposium celebrates the 30-year anniversary of ROPPA. The articles in the symposium look back and forward to take stock of the current state of the public human resource management (HRM) field. This introduction reviews publishing trends in the journal over the past 30 years, including the contributions of editors and authors, the subject matter of articles published in the journal, the most frequent contributors, and the Review of Public Personnel Administration's impact. The introduction concludes with highlights from the five articles appearing in this symposium and their focus on critical issues in the field, including a strategic research agenda for HRM, workforce diversity, performance-based pay, labor–management relations, and public HRM education.